


chapters

by maiaronan



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Complete, F/M, how do I even tag this, im dead this fic has taken allllll of me, literally every emotion you can possibly feel for a person?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-01-31 22:43:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12691713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maiaronan/pseuds/maiaronan
Summary: “How has your relationship changed through the years?” the reporter asks.“Which chapter do you want to hear?” I respond without missing a beat.Twenty years of something ridiculous, something impossible, something grand and beautiful and incredible, according to one small boy from one small Canadian town."One 22,000-word epic story traces a fictional relationship from when they first met as children to them bracing for their final Olympics this year" — the Canadian Press, apparently





	1. part one

**Author's Note:**

> These are the illustrious lost chapters of their relationship, according to Scott ;).  
> This has been a real joy and pain for me as a writer, having to change Scott's voice as he grows up. But it's been a good exercise in style that I usually don't get to do, so let me know how I did. Now, get reading!

**"1"**

 I have to hold Tessa’s hand and I guess it’s fine because Danny held Sheri’s hand all the time and he never got cooties or anything.

It’s Tuesday night. I wanted to go play hockey with the other boys but Mom told me I had to go figure skating that day because the girls needed partners.

I didn’t know why she kept saying “the girls” when Aunt Carol only wants me to skate with Tessa now.

I think about how I really want to play hockey, but I then tell myself that it’ll be over soon. I just have to go around the rink a few times and hold Tessa’s hand.

She has really really tiny hands and they’re always super warm and soft, and they make me notice how sweaty my hands are, and then she notices me noticing my sweaty hands which makes me sweatier.

But Tessa’s really nice, or she’s really quiet, because she never says anything about it. She holds my hand all properly and she gives me a smile. She lost her front tooth yesterday and now she has a big gap in the front of her teeth.

“Come on, Scott and Tessa,” I hear my aunt say from across the rink. Her voice is small and echoey, but I hear her perfectly, even with all the other skaters running past us with their loud blades on the ice.

“Let’s dance!” I say to Tessa, who’s fiddling with the sleeves of her coat. Whenever Aunt Carol wants us to do something, I always pretend we’re dancing, even though we’re just going in circles and spinning, because she can never say no to dancing. I think if Tessa could trade her feet for ballet slippers she would because all she wants to do is dance and dance all the time.

“Yes,” she says shyly, even though we’ve been dancing for a while now (two whole weeks). I wish she isn’t so quiet sometimes because I like having someone to talk to when we’re going around the rink again and again. She takes my hand again and it feels nice, and I give her a squeeze as we practice our stroking around the rink. I’m looking at her, making sure I don’t step on her, but she doesn’t look at me. She’s just concentrating on the skating, or maybe she’s thinking about something else. She’s only eight, so maybe she’s still confused about some things in the world. I should tell her I could explain things to her maybe some time, because I’m older and I know more things.

Aunt Carol has everyone work on spinning their partners. So I lead Tessa into a spin, just like how we learned last weekend. She didn’t really get it at first, but now she does it lightning fast. She’s like a blur.

“Great work, Tessa,” Aunt Carol praises her, and I see Tessa smile as she heard that.

“Yeah, that was so good,” I say to her, mostly because Mom told me I had to start being a “better sport” and not do mean things to the girls like pull their pigtails.

But when she hears that, Tessa smiles at me too, but not in the same way she smiles at Aunt Carol. Her eyes get brighter like a flashlight, and all of the smile seems to go there. She giggles and gives my hand a little squeeze back. “Thank you, Scott,” she says, all politely, even though she doesn’t have to be.

I decide that maybe I should start being nice to her from now on, for real.

 

**"2"**

 Tessa has been gone for two months and three days now. Not that I’m counting, of course. Well, maybe a little bit, because Aunt Carol started talking about skating with other girls when skating camp opened again in the fall—

“But I don’t want to skate with anybody except Tessa,” I tell her.

She looks like she’s going to argue with me but then she looks surprised, and then it looks like she’s going to laugh at me. I feel my cheeks get a little hot. “What?” I ask, and then I regret it because I know I wasn’t supposed to be rude to her.

“Why not?” she asks me.

“Well...” I didn’t really know why I said that, but now I have to have an answer. “Nobody is as good as her.” I give Aunt Carol the biggest shrug I can make myself do. “And I only want to skate with the best. It’s boring waiting for the other girls to catch up. I want to do more lifts but they can’t even do spins right.”

Aunt Carol is biting the corner of her lip now. She looks like she’s thinking hard.

“Why can’t I just skate with Tessa?” I ask, sighing. Then I realize something. “Wait, is she not coming back?” I think my blood stopped flowing to my heart. “Is she hurt? Did she stop skating? _Did she find another partner_?” That might just be the worst scenario and I actually feel a little angry.

“She said we were _official_ ,” I say, with my best Tessa impression. “We’re supposed to be _real_ partners now!”

“Alright, hush,” Aunt Carol says, in her coach-voice, and I stop talking but I don’t stop glaring at her. “I heard from Tessa’s mom that Tessa might be going to ballet school full-time.”

I blink. “Oh.” My voice sounds small. “Oh. I guess that’s ok.” I let out a sigh. “Tessa always liked ballet more than skating. She should do what she likes.”

Aunt Carol is still looking at me funny, but she just ruffles my hair and lets me go back to whatever I was doing.

What was I doing? I was playing four-square with some boys at camp, and they had Andrew fill in for me while I was gone. I go back to them and they call for me to join, but I didn’t feel like playing. I just sat on the bench table nearby and watched them.

Tessa left to go do stuff at ballet school months ago, and now she’s staying? That must mean she got in and they want her. I think I’m supposed to be feeling proud or happy for her, but I don’t. That means she’ll have to move there and go to school there all the time. That means I probably wouldn’t see her a lot anymore.

I don’t know what I’m more upset about. Tessa leaving or that I have to find someone new to skate with. I wasn’t sure about the whole ice dance thing at first but it was really good and fun after Tessa and I started skating together, _officially_. And now she’s going to leave?

But I guess that’s okay. She has to do what she likes. She’d never stop me from doing what I like. But still, I can’t help but feel kind of sad.

That kind of sad feeling stuck right in the back of my brain for the rest of summer. I mean, I wasn’t _sad_ , just kind of sad. I think I miss Tessa but I don’t think she’s allowed to call anyone or anything. I hear her Mom has a lot of trouble trying to talk to her on the phone because they’re so strict. I wonder if Tessa likes it there. She loves it when grown ups are strict with her. It’s so weird. She’s so weird.

I always know summer ends when the skate club and the rink opens up again. Aunt Carol didn’t say anything more about Tessa to me, so I thought that was that.

I get all my stuff into my bag and walk into the rink. I see all the kids skating around the rink and practicing their stroking and their spins. I kind of missed ice dance over the summer, and I especially missed it more this year because Tessa was—is gone.

I look at all the girls in their pink coats skating around and around the rink. I look at them hard, and wonder who will be my new partner. I hope Aunt Carol chose someone who’s as pretty as Tessa, although I’m pretty sure she’s the prettiest girl—

“Hey Scott,” I hear Tessa’s voice behind me and I’m really, _really_ confused for a second.

I turn around to see her coming in with her gym bag, a tan and a lot of freckles. Now I’m _super_ confused. “Tessa?” I hope my voice isn’t too loud but I am  _so_ confused.

Tessa stops. She’d lost her two bottom teeth. I see it as she asks, “Did you forget who I am?” She puts down her stuff. “It’s only been a summer.”

I shake my head. That’s silly. I can never forget who Tessa is. “I thought you went to ballet school."

Tessa _pffts_. “Oh. Yeah, I got in,” she says, pretty casually, like it was no big deal. “But I told them that I’d already promised to be your partner, so I couldn’t go.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I mean, we promised we’d be _official partners_ , remember?” she asks me as she takes her skates out of her bag. She sits down in the nearby bleachers and starts lacing them up. “So I couldn’t just leave you. We were doing really good work before I left.”

“O-Oh.”

She looks up at me as she finishes lacing her skates. “Are you not happy to see me?” She stands up. I see that she’s a few inches taller than me now.

“I’m so happy,” I _insist_. “Now just don’t ever try to leave again.”

 

 **"3"**

The moon is still up when I get out of Mom’s car and sit on the bench. It’s so cold, I feel my body shaking as me and my mom stand outside the church. I almost jump into Tessa’s car as she and her dad pull up to the cul-de-sac.

“Ah-h-h,” I say as I press my face into the heater vents in the backseat. “It’s so cold out there. Here, feel my hands.” I thrust my hands into Tessa’s and squeeze them. They are so warm. “Thanks,” I say as I stick my cold hands up her sleeves.

She jumps. “Stop!” she giggles, slapping me away. Her voice breaks a little bit, kind of raspy from just waking up minutes before. She looks super pale in the mornings, maybe because she is so tired and the circles under her eyes are darker.

“Alright, pipe down kids,” Mr. Virtue says as we exit onto the highway. He puts on his country music (to keep him awake), and I hear the familiar _bump bump bum_ of the road underneath us. It sounds like a lullaby and it always puts me to sleep. But for some reason, today I can’t fall asleep, even though I’m so tired and it’s so early.

Tessa is out like a light. She loves sleeping and she’s very good at it. And so there I am, wide awake. I try looking out the window for a little bit, but the scenery is just trees and trees and trees for the whole way, and it gets boring fast. It’s too dark to see if there are any cows or horses on the roadside farms, so I turn back to Tessa. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her sleeping before, because I’m usually always asleep too.

Tessa’s stomach rises and falls under her dark gray winter coat, her long bangs falling over her eyes. She needs to get them cut because they keep getting in her eyes during practice.

The highway lights flash on her face as we zoom by them, and I see her eyelids twitching. I wonder if she’s dreaming. I wonder what she dreams about. She says she dreams about going to the Olympics, and if not that, skating, but I wonder if she dreams about anything else.

I think I should ask her next time if she’s ever had any dreams about me. Because I’ve had dreams about her. I don’t think I’ve ever told her before, though, because we haven’t talked about those kinds of dreams before. But definitely, next time.

She stirs, and I quickly think I must be breathing too loud or doing something to wake her up, but she settles back into sleep quickly. Her head falls on my shoulder and I can feel her breath on my neck. It’s kind of nice. 

I usually sleep so deeply during the car rides to Waterloo that I don’t remember anything from them, but I start to wonder if she’s ever done this before.

She’s almost falling out of her seatbelt, so I put my hand around her waist and pull her closer so she can be more comfortable. I don’t want her all achy and tight when we had to skate for three hours after we get there. I see her smile in her sleep as she leans against me. I can feel her entire body relax. I lean my face on her head. Apple shampoo.

I fall asleep to the warmth of her big fluffy jacket, the rhythm of the road, and the wailing of banjos in the background.

 

 **"4"**  

“Shut up.”

I regret the words immediately as they leave my mouth.

Tessa stands there, stormy-faced, her face red as a tomato. She doesn’t say anything. I _wish_ she said something back. At least then I wouldn’t feel so bad. But she storms out of the rink, never even giving me a second glance as she bangs the doors of the rink open and disappears into the lobby.

Suzanne is holding her head in her hands. I feel really bad now. Everyone is angry. I skate into a corner and try not to cry.

“Okay,” Suzanne says as she pries me from my cry-corner and, more forcibly than usual, and pushes me out of the rink.

I’m tight-lipped and watery-eyed as she gets me into the lobby and plants me in front of Tessa, who’s shaking in the corner of the lobby, glaring at me, her eyes green, furious slits.

“Let’s be nice to each other and _talk_ about what went wrong there. Tessa?” Suzanne gestures towards my tomato-red skating partner.

“She—”

“I said _Tessa_ ,” Suzanne interrupts me in a deadly voice. I quiet down immediately, but my entire body is still hot and I still feel like punching a wall.

Tessa straightens up. She’s still glaring at me. A loose curl fell from her bun and is now hanging in front of her face. She’s still managing to look through that piece of hair and straight at me. “I just feel like I practice all the time and I care all the time about this,” she begins, so quietly that I had to strain to hear her, “and Scott just fools around and wastes our time every single practice.”

I feel every nerve in my body blaze up in my defense. “That’s _so unfa_ —”

“Nuh uh,” Suzanne shushes me with one quick arm movement. “Tessa’s turn.”

Now I find myself glaring back at Tessa. I don’t like being angry with her. I hate being angry with her, actually, but it’s hard not to be at that moment.

“We’ve done this step sequence a million times,” Tessa says, her voice rising in pitch. “And he just forgets it _every time_. We’ve done this program a million times. I can’t keep reminding him how to do it. He should just remember how to do it!”

I open my mouth to yell something back, but I could feel Suzanne tighten her grip on my arm, warning me not to make a sound.

“Okay, Scott?” she prompts softly.

“I _would_ remember it if you didn’t stare me down every single time, like you’re judging me!” I blurt out, balling my fists. “I get so nervous whenever we get to that part because I know you’re gonna give me that face—”

“What _face_?”

“Tessa don’t interr—”

“That stupid _I’m so much better than you_ face.”

“Scott—”

“Maybe if you just remembered you steps I wouldn’t have to give you whatever this _face_ is—”

“Maybe I would remember the steps if it didn’t look like you’re gonna fucking murder me every time I fuck up—”

“ _Scott_.”

“Maybe if you didn’t _suck dick_ —”

“ _ENOUGH.”_ Suzanne grab us both and I feel her nails digging straight into my arm. We both shut our mouths, but I can see Tessa’s little body heaving with anger.

Suzanne drops us, and puts her head in her hands again. She looks like she wants be anywhere, except here, with two fuming, cranky pre-teens who look like they’re ready to fight to the death.

“This is never going to happen again,” she says, pressing her fingers to her temples. “Not the yelling, not the language, not the attitude. We are going to _talk_ nicely about things from now on. Because fighting like this is _not_ acceptable, nor is it productive. And it is not allowed, at least not with me around. _Understand_?”

We glare at each other, silent as stone.

“ _Tessa. Scott_.”

“Yes,” we say in unison, but I know neither of us are feeling it.

“Now both of you are going to apologize, _nicely_ , to one another. Tessa, you first.”

Tessa is breathing so fast I think she must want to pass out. “I’m sorry I make you feel like you’re not good enough,” she says, and I know she’s struggling to make it sound sincere. She then hesitates. Her face falls a little, and I feel some of my anger disappear. “I don’t mean it,” she continues, tugging at her jacket, and she finally stops glaring at me. She’s looking at the floor now. “You’re the best skater I know, Scott. I’m sorry I’m too intense. I know it’s a big problem I have and I promise I’ll try my best to work on it.”

Something in her voice almost makes me want to break our angry stances and run to hug her. Suzanne is nodding next to us, looking very approving. “Scott?”

I take a deep breath. _Please, look at me_ , I think, and almost as if she reads my mind, she looks up. I lock my eyes into hers. “I’m sorry I yelled,” I say, because I really am. “I’m really bad at... keeping stuff under control. I’m sorry I swore. I’m sorry I was mean. I’m sorry I made you upset. I’m sorry.”

Tessa’s eyes are filling with tears and they run down her cheeks. I cave and grab her into a tight hug. She’s sobbing into my shirt as I awkwardly pat her back. I can’t believe I’m making her cry. I feel like dirt.

I feel Suzanne pat me on the back, softly, before she leaves us in private. I know she knows she's done her job. I see her disappear through the doors to the rink.

I close my eyes and rub my hands in circular motions along Tessa’s back, waiting for her high-pitched sobs to quiet down. She’s clinging to me like she’s going to die. I wonder if there’s anyone around who just saw what went down. It would be so embarrassing. I just made a girl cry. There’s no way to make that look good.

“Aw, Tess,” I say into her hair as she cries. The whole front of my shirt is wet now. It's gonna get real cold in the rink. I guess I deserve it.

Tessa looks up at me. Man, she’s a mess. Her eyeliner’s everywhere and her face is pink and puffy. She takes a hiccupy breath and wipes her face with her hands.

“I’m gonna,” she begins breathlessly, “go to the washroom.”

I nod. “Do you want me to wait?” I ask, even though I know what the answer is.

“Yes please,” Tessa whispers as she tucks her fingers into mine and gives it a little squeeze. Then she’s gone in a flash.

I stare into the nothingness in front of me as she disappears into the women’s room. My mind is blank, all tired out from the back-and-forth we had earlier.

Tessa emerges from the washroom, and it looks like she’d never been crying to begin with. Hair fixed, makeup fixed, her outfit all properly straightened out. Professional as ever. I don’t know how she does it.

“Okay,” she says as she takes my hand. “I’m ready.”

 

 **"5"**  

I see Tessa come out of the locker room in the gray hoodie and sweatpants she arrived to the rink in. There’s a slight glow on her skin from the workout and the sweat. She’s taken off her makeup and let her hair down. I find myself thinking she looks really good.

“Hey,” I say to her before she can walk off. “Didn’t think I would run into you here.”

“Hey,” she says back, refusing to laugh at my stupid joke, but I can see it flickering in her eyes.

I find myself thinking she looks really good a lot of the time now, actually. I don’t know what it is, because she looks the same as always. Maybe it’s the way her cheekbones are hollowing out, or how she’s doing her eyeliner nowadays that makes her eyes look so bright and green. Maybe it’s because I’m just thinking about her like that.

I walk up to her and I realize that the top of her head comes up to my eyes now. What a difference three inches can do for self-esteem. “What are you doing tonight?”

Tessa smiles at me. Her eyelashes look insanely long with whatever mascara she’s using now. “Sleeping,” she responds, rolling her eyes. “The same thing I do every night.” The laughter drops from her eyes in an instant. “It’s not like I have any friends here.”

“Oh,” I say, suddenly feeling a little out of my element. “Well, I was going to ask you if you... wanted to watch a movie?”

Tessa blinks. “Will you let me pick?” she asks, gazing up at me, and I know she’s doing that thing where she’s trying to mesmerize me so I can let her do whatever she wants. And it’s working. What mascara _is_ she using?

“Yes,” I say, and almost regret it. “Damn, you’re gonna make me watch a boring old movie aren’t you?”

“They’re not boring!” Tessa protests as she slings her bag over her shoulder. “They’re _art_.”

“Uh huh,” I say, unconvinced, as I follow her out. We hop in my car—a beat up old thing that I managed to salvage from a broke university kid—I just got my license and it’s almost the best feeling in the world. Second to winning the Olympics, I’m sure, but it’s still pretty damn good.

I still have to drive Tessa around, but I don’t mind. Having a car means not having to carpool with the other skaters as much, or ask our host parents to drive us places. And even if Tessa has to go to the grocery store with me, that just means that I’ll be hanging at Sobeys with Tessa Virtue, doing stupid shit like eating candy from the bulk aisle or arguing over which flavor of ice cream we should buy this week.

I start the ignition and pull out of the parking lot. The rink disappears behind us.

It’s late evening. The clouds are red from the sunset, just moments before. I look over at Tessa as we stop at the intersection. She’s looking out the window, her face cast in the orange light of the sky. She looks especially tired.

“Are you getting enough sleep?” I ask before I can help myself. Not that I want to come off acting like her dad or something weird like that, but sometimes I get worried about her. And I just say what’s on my mind.

“Mm,” is all Tessa says.

“Do you still want to watch a movie? I can just drop you off and you can go to sleep if you want.”

“No,” Tessa says, turning to me and giving me a smile. A small one, but still a Tessa smile. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

I groan. “We’ve seen that before,” I point out as I turn into the neighborhood. The noise of traffic fades immediately as we enter the quiet, empty streets.

Tessa just keeps smiling and batting her eyelashes at me, and I know she’s won.

We’re curled up on the couch with a bowl of trail mix, and I’m doing that thing where I pick out the M&Ms to eat and it annoys the hell out of Tessa every time I do it, but she seemed too beat to care this time. Breakfast at Tiffany’s is buzzing along on the lowest volume in the background, its vintage sound turning into an insignificant radio hum.

I can’t stop looking at Tessa. She’s not eating the trail mix. She’s not even watching the movie. She’s just sort of sitting there, staring into space with a slightly troubled expression on her face.

I scoot closer to her. “What’s wrong, T?” I ask, and I hear my voice fall like two octaves as it became a quiet murmur. “Did something happen at school today?” I shake my head, wanting to apologize for sounding like an overprotective parent but I think somehow, Tessa already knows.

She looks at me, slowly, and my heart really starts to wrench and I really start to worry, because I’ve never seen her so drained. “I just miss home,” she replies slowly, as if each word is cutting her like a blade. She pulls her knees to her chin. Suddenly, I see the seven year old girl with freckles and mismatched teeth.

“Hey,” I say as I instinctively put my arm around her. I know it seems like I’m being a huge tool right now—movie, girl is sad, I’m making a move, but it’s not really like that between me and Tessa. It never is.

She feels like a huge ragdoll as she flops over onto my chest and buries her face there for a moment. I wrap my arms around her, expecting her to cry. I actually would’ve preferred if she did. But she just lay there, motionless and silent. It's kind of eerie. Tessa is usually good at hiding her emotions, so unlike me, and I’m just now starting to realize I’ve never seen her like this before. Is she sad? No, it seems to be something deeper than that.

“Do you ever feel like... this is kind of weird?” Tessa says into my shirt.

I furrow my brow. “What is weird?”

“Like, everything,” Tessa says as she looks up at me. I’m almost distracted again by the intensity of her eyes. “Like, I dunno, not going to stuff other kids go to because we’re at the rink all the time. Like having to tell people you’re going to Slovakia but only because you’re skating. Not doing the cool stuff they expect you to do. And...” She bit her lip. “Well, okay... when someone asks about me... what do you say?”

She is light years ahead of me. “I’m... confused,” I say.

“Okay,” Tessa says as she puts her hand on my shoulder. “Like, do people ever ask stuff like, who’s that girl you’re always hanging out with?”

“Oh,” I reply, “I just say you’re the girl I skate with. And then I have to explain the whole ice dance thing to them. And then they get weirded out and confused.”

“Right. And then they ask if we’re dating.”

“Well I hang out with a bunch of guys so it’s more like are you guys fu—”

“Scott.”

“Okay okay, sorry. But yeah they’ll ask what we’re _really_ doing or something like that. And I always tell them we’re just dance partners. And we’re really good friends too. Because you know, I’ve known you since... forever.”

There’s a silence. I see the rise and fall of Tessa’s chest as she breathes, thinking. No, I _feel_ her breathe, since she’s still lying—for lack of a better description—in my arms. Suddenly I’m acutely aware of this breathing, and the way her body feels against mine, and how soft and warm she is, and how good she smells, even though we just came back from skating for an entire day, and I feel the dreaded tightness in my pants.

Tessa closes her eyes. And she keeps them closed for so long that I think she falls asleep.

“Tess?” I whisper, running my fingers through her hair. I feel her shudder as she reacts to my touch. I hesitate. She’s never done that before when I do it in practice. I pull my hand back. Am I making her uncomfortable?

She opens her eyes again. “Right,” she almost croaks, her voice sounding exhausted. “Yeah, that’s a good way to put it.”

“What is?” Jeez, maybe I’m tired too. I swear the conversation just happened a few seconds ago and everything had just flushed out of my brain.

“Just dance partners,” Tessa repeats quietly, and she returns to watching the movie. “And really good friends. Nothing weird.”

But the way she says it hurts.

I feel something surge inside of me. Something like... the feeling I get before a competition, where all the competitors are bigger and better, and I have something to prove. Something inside of me is bursting, calling everyone to look at me.

But there is nobody right now. Nobody except Tessa.

“Tessa, look at me,” I whisper, right into her ear, my mouth so close to her that it brushes her earlobe. I rarely use her real name so I think she knows something is up. I feel her entire body tense as her hand tightens around the fabric of the couch. Her breathing quickens, and I can almost hear her heart racing. I can feel it, even though it’s beating in a separate body.

Maybe it is kind of weird. What I just said. The whole... being able to feel her heart even when it’s not inside of me. God, I couldn’t imagine explaining that shit to my buddies.

I know why she's hesitating, and not wanting to look at me. And I know she knows. She always knows exactly what I’m thinking. Damn, another weird thing. It’s starting to add up—

She finally looks at me, and I finally kiss her.

I’ve never kissed anyone before, but I imagine that this is everything it’s supposed to be. Tessa’s lips are perfect, just like everything else about her, and when she kisses me back, and her fingers tangle into my hands, and then my hair, I think I finally understand.

“I love you,” I breathe, before I can help myself. _What the hell are you saying_? I hear a small voice in my mind screaming from its depths, but I can barely hear it. The truth, something I couldn’t possibly hold back and push down.

The expression in Tessa’s eyes is so complicated that I couldn’t decipher what she's thinking, even if I wanted to—that's the last thing on my mind. I just want to keep kissing her.

Tessa doesn’t respond. Her face is flushed, her mouth is parted, panting slightly, her lips wet from our kiss. She’s looking at me like her heart is going to burst and break at the same time.


	2. part two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, your enthusiasm for this fic has blown me away. Thank you for all the kind comments and messages I've received over the past few days.

**"6"**

Tessa, of course, goes to the full extent of decorating just about everything in her bedroom. Clean, crisp, and perfectly arranged—her white bedsheets matched her white curtains, and her walls were tastefully decorated with black-and-white photographs of flowers and dancers and old European buildings. Matching rugs, throws, and pillows are sprinkled in here and there and it makes me feel like we’re in a luxury hotel room. Why is her taste in everything more like a middle-aged mom than a fifteen year old girl? That’s one of the weird things about her—would it kill her to paint her room pink and plaster it with posters of teenage boybands? Probably.

On the other hand, my room is still a dysfunctional collection of boxes and half-unpacked suitcases. But nobody’s surprised, are they?

Tessa’s put strings of fairy lights around every wall and corner and she’s draped them over furniture and her bedposts. We don’t even need overhead lights or lamps because her room basically turns into a freakin’ lighthouse when she powers those things on.

“Decorating for Christmas already?” I comment, wrinkling my nose and trying to figure out where she manages to find enough outlets and extension cords for all these lights.

“It makes it more... homey,” Tessa says as she plops down on her bed. Her fluffy white comforter barely sinks under her. She swings her legs onto the mattress as I push the door shut. For a brief second, I reach for the lock, but then I stop and tell myself that there’s no reason to lock the door.

I sit down next to her on the bed, and put my arm around her shoulder for good measure.

“What do we have?” Tessa asks as she leans into me.

“No fucking clue,” I say as I dispose of the brown paper bag. I toss it on the floor. Tessa squirms. I tighten my hold around her body as she instinctively tries to go to pick it up. “Leave it.”

She whimpers and stares longingly at the one piece of trash on her otherwise impeccably clean hardwood floor.

Everything on the bottle is in another language—Russian, we think—so when I said I had no fucking clue what I’d stolen—er, _borrowed_ —from the stash back at the coaches’ house, I wasn’t lying. But there _is_ that diagram of the pregnant woman on the back label with the big red X over her and you don’t need to be a genius to figure that one out.

“You’re not pregnant, are you?” I ask Tessa as I pry off the lid. A whiff of this stuff come out and I almost gag. “‘Cause if you are I’m afraid we have to cut this party short.”

Tessa’s entire face flushed so red so fast that I immediately start laughing. “No!” she hisses, clearly not entertained by my joke. She rolls her eyes at me as she covers her nose with her sleeve. “Ugh, smells like jet fuel.” She coughs. “This is so illegal. I _cannot_ believe I agreed to this.”

“Good thing you can always illegally take my car and illegally drive me to the hospital if this doesn’t work out for me,” I say as I tip the mouth of the bottle to my lips. “Cheers.”

“I would let you die,” Tessa says stonily.

I force myself to swallow whatever I’d just put in my mouth. It burns like fire as it goes down my throat and into my belly, and I can _feel_ my cheeks flush with the heat. It’s surprisingly spicy and kind of tastes like grass. Did I mention it burns?

“You wouldn’t let me die,” I say playfully to Tessa as I pass her the bottle. She looks at it suspiciously as it ends up in her hands.

“Oh yes I would,” Tessa insists. “I’d find another partner the next day, Scott Moir.” She raises the bottle at me. “To us.” She takes a swig and nearly spits. “Holy sh—” She coughs loudly as the liquid goes down her throat.

I take the bottle back. I can feel my grin stretching ear to ear. Something about Tessa sitting in her pristine bedroom, cursing, and downing a bottle of alcohol made me incredibly happy. Do I love her? Yes. Am I always a fantastic influence? ...Well...

“To our senior debut,” I say, tipping more into my mouth. It burns a little less this time. I give the bottle back to Tessa.

“To our future _international_ senior debut.”

“To winning everything,” I amend. 

“To us making the Olympics next year,” Tessa says before taking a huge sip. She almost isn’t able to get that one down.

“Impressive,” I say as I see her neck start to flush red. “Whoa. Careful there, princess.”

“I’m not a princess,” Tessa growls as she snatches the bottle back.

It’s getting harder to see straight but I can still see a competitive fire lighting in her eyes. “You are,” I say, and I’m only sort of surprised at how confidently it comes out of my mouth. Well, there’s a reason why it’s called liquid courage, isn’t it. “You’re _my_ princess.” Now I’m just saying dumb shit, but if you think Sober Scott is bad, Drunk Scott is going to knock your socks off.

Tessa glares at me, but I can see corners of her mouth turning up in a sly, coy smile. She sets the bottle on the floor. “I’m not. Your. Princess.” She steps on something on the floor, I hear a _click_. All the lights go out, leaving us in the dark.

Tessa closes the gap between us. I feel her lips on mine and behind closed eyes, I see the lights again, twinkling like a million little stars.

 

**"7"**

The entire hotel is silent. Of course nobody would be up this early. I make sure I have the card to the door and shut it behind me.

I hear something from the other end of the hallway. I look up and see the faraway figure of Tessa doing the same thing. It’s hard to miss her with her bright orange hair.

 _Hey_ , I want to say, but bite back the words. I find myself hesitating, unsure of what to do or say. Should I just pretend that nothing happened? Should we talk about it? Should we—

Tessa looks up and she sees me. She looks like she’d just gotten up, freshly showered and clean. Her eyes lock into mine and I can’t help but smile at her. Just seeing her gives me an instant mood boost.

But she doesn’t smile back. My heart drops. _Oh no, Virtch_. I’m walking towards her before I can help it. For a moment, she just stands there, staring into space, but after a heartbeat she meets me in the middle of the hallway.

“Hi,” I murmur as I pull her into a hug. I see her crack a little smile as she buries her face into my shoulder. A good start.

I let her out of the hug and then finally I see how puffy and dark eyes are, and how emotionally exhausted she looks. Her face is pale and everything about her seems to have lost its usual glow. Has she been crying all night? Even the thought of that makes my stomach clench. Tessa almost never cries— _I’m_ the crier out of the two of us. Tessa has somehow mastered the ability to shove all her emotions down, down, down, and if she does finally snap, she sheds a few tears and then forces herself to pull her shit together again. I don’t know how she does it, and I’m pretty sure it’s _not_ healthy, especially at her age. Seeing her like this almost makes me so worried. I can’t help it.

She immediately knows that I’ve seen what she’s been trying to hide, and quickly looks away. “Hi,” she says casually, towards her shoes.

I hesitate. Do we talk about it? Do we _not_ talk about it? Unsure of what to do, I just take her hand and rub it between my fingers. She’s always so cold.

She looks up at me, the very faintest traces of tears beginning to form in her eyes. But she refuses to let them spill. But that brief second said everything. _What now_?

I swallow. “Well,” I answer, as if she’s spoken those words aloud and I’m responding to them, “we can go down and get some breakfast?”

Tessa’s face falls. Great. What did I say wrong? “I...” she begins, hoarsely. She pauses. “I... don’t know if I can deal with everybody right now. You know?” Her shoulders droop.

Oh. Yeah, I almost forgot that our entire hometown has basically picked itself up, shuttled up to Ottawa to watch us make the Olympics that we completely and totally did not make—

 _It’s too early for this_ , I think as I force myself to stop replaying the last twelve hours in my head. “Didn’t even think about that.” I exhale loudly and press my forehead on the top of her head. Her hair smells like apples, like it always does.

“That’s why I’m here to do the thinking,” she replies in such a monotone that it’s almost funny.

“Let’s go somewhere then,” I say, “skip the shitty continental breakfast, skip the pity party with our aunts and cousins and brothers and moms and whoever else decided to come along. Let’s go somewhere _nice_.”

Tessa’s eyes light up. “Yeah?” she asks, and it’s incredible how happy she makes me when she’s happy.

“Yeah,” I say, ruffling her hair like she’s eight years old again. “I’ll buy. We deserve it.” I kiss her temple, and she almost melts into me. Her green eyes are brimming. _I don’t know how you’re always so optimistic._ Tessa laces her fingers into my hand and gives it a little squeeze.

I can’t help but smile at her. _One of us has to be_.

It’s freezing cold outside and the streets are piled with fresh snow. I pull up my scarf and huddle into my coat as the wind passes us by. I briefly wonder if anyone will wonder where we went, but I shake that thought out of my head. They probably think we’re sleeping in, as teenagers should, not trekking around the city in the blizzard, looking for a distraction.

Tessa and I wander around the city until we’re cold and tired and finally give in to a little brick cafe on the side of the road. Tessa gets a hot chocolate and I get coffee and we sit there, basking in the warmth of their wood fireplace, not saying really much of anything. It’s perfect, just looking at each other through half-closed eyes, listening to the soft jazz over the cafe speakers and the crackling of the flames.

I forget everything that's happened. It’s almost as if the skating world never existed in the first place.

 

**"8"**

I have this habit of singing along to our program music that Marina hates and Tessa tolerates (and even occasionally finds funny), and because of that I’m pretty sure Marina has made it a point to choose a French song for this season, thinking that’ll deter me from mouthing along to every single line every time we skate. (Hey, I can’t help it. I just feel the music and I start singing along at the top of my lungs.)

Well, she's wrong. A few weeks into Umbrellas, I’m already doing a very poor imitation of whatever they’re saying in the soundtrack.

“Comon la tu apple-ay?” I sing dramatically to Tessa as I reach out to grab her waist. She loses concentration and snickers, completely forgetting where we are in the choreography. “Francoiseeeeeee,” I wail, and Tessa doubles over laughing.

“Scott, be serious!” Marina barks from the boards.

Tessa wipes a single tear from the corner of her eye. “We should,” she says, catching her breath. “Come on.” She smiles her Tessa smile at me and grabs my hands, and we start over. This time I’m able to keep the song in my heart, for Tessa’s sake.

This is the snapshot of a wonderful moment that repeats itself for the next few months. I try to make Tessa laugh, until she convinces me it’s time to be serious. Then we’re serious for a few hours, and then I try to make her laugh again. She always does. We're a real team. We're invincible.

" _Representing Canada, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir_."

Life is kind of surreal now. I feel like things are finally clicking into place. We have medals. People make signs for us at competitions. We’re _seniors_. We’re doing all the stuff we’ve only been able to _watch_ other skaters do for _years_. Every day I feel this low hum of excitement under my chest, like what I’m walking on isn’t exactly real. There’s something great and important in the distance, something that we can’t see yet but we can hear and feel, like faraway drums that are beating louder and louder with each step.

I find myself thinking about this a lot nowadays, especially when we’re skating Umbrellas. I don’t know why my mind starts wandering when I hear Catherine Deneuve sing, but it must mean something is happening, because I’m no longer thinking about the steps when I skate. 

When I suddenly snap back to reality, I see Tessa. I mean, I really _see_ her. I pause everything in my mind and _watch_ her. She’s become an amazing skater since our move to Canton, and everyday she continues to push me to catch up with her. Her eyes twinkle at me as she gives me a sideways glance, her back bent in a beautiful arch, the line of her athletic body reaching all the way to her perfectly poised finger tips. Her hair is thrown back in the wind, and in that split second, she closes her eyes and looks utterly, utterly blissful, like she’s falling into a blanket of nothingness, as if her entire mind and body are somewhere else entirely.

In that moment, I think she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. She looks like frozen stardust, her body capturing one surreal moment of ice and the music and the art itself. She’s magical. I can’t stop looking at her.

I pull her back into my arms.

 _Mon amour_ , goes the music, and I don’t know if I slipped up and sang along out of habit, but she must’ve realized something, because I see her lips form _je t’aime_ in response.

_Mon amour._

_Je t’aime_.

It’s all so simple, really.

I hear the strings swell in the core of my body and I realize that whatever she was feeling a second ago, I’m in it now as well. I realize that this beautiful girl who looks like snow and stars is the one who's pulling _me_ into something intoxicating. I can't escape anymore. She has me locked in. This— _she_ —is my entire life.

As we come to the end of the program, and it's time to perform the choreographed stage-kiss, I let my lips touch hers, just a little longer and a little more intentionally than I usually would. I feel a jolt of electricity between us. It’s so strange because I’ve kissed Tessa _for real_ before, but this. This is different. This is something special. This is something I can’t explain.

I hear the thunderous roar of the audience, and out of the corner of my eye I see people rising from their seats. I blink, almost in a daze. Is that the end? Did we finish? When did we start skating? Where was I?

Tessa is looking at me, her eyes glowing as she takes my hand. I don’t know exactly what’s happened or what we just did, but it really must’ve been something incredible.

 

**"9"**

I must’ve asked Tessa to explain and re-explain everything five times over, and she does, patiently every time, but I still have to ask. “Are you sure?” I’m gripping the armrests so tight that I see my knuckles turning white.

Tessa sighs and leans back in her seat. I drove her home after practice today, which is when she  _so graciously_  decided to break the news. Actually, I’m kind of glad she waited til we got to the driveway, because I might’ve driven us into a ditch. Most definitely would've ended up in the ditch.

“Yes. It’s worth a shot,” she says to me. “Because if I don’t do it, I know this will only get worse.”

“But...”

“Scott. They won’t accidentally saw off my leg or anything. I’ll be back soon, in _one piece_.”

The car falls silent for a moment.

“Still not convinced, huh?” Tessa sighs.

“Well you kind of told me you’re leaving _tomorrow_ for an indefinite period of time,” I begin, “thirty minutes ago. Give me a little longer to... I dunno, _process._ ” I know I sound pissed, but it’s really hard not to. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“I only made the decision last week,” Tessa replies, quietly, but I can hear a defensive edge creeping into her tone.

“Why didn’t you tell me then?” I demand.

“I didn’t want to worry you,” Tessa replies tensely. “We would’ve been a hot mess the entire week if you’d known that I was leaving for surgery the entire time. You would’ve looked for excuses to get me off the ice. It wouldn’t have been productive.”

I bite back a retort. Damn, she’s right. How is she always right. I don’t know if I should feel relieved or angry, but I’m feeling a mixture of both and it’s terrible.

“Anyway,” Tessa continues, smoothing her fingers over my clenched fists. “I’m going to go, I’m going to get the surgery, I’m going to be in physio for a few months, and then I’m coming back. That is the plan. Okay?”

 _No, not okay, stay_. I want to keep fighting her, but I know it’s a lost cause. I exhale, feeling the tension leave my chest, and leaving me with a sharp, anxious twist in my stomach. “Okay,” I say softly.

Tessa gives me a peck on the cheek. I feel helpless. _Don’t ever leave again_ , I remember saying to her, more than a decade ago.

A decade. I’m trying to put on a brave face, but I know it’s useless. She can see through right it. She can see through everything. There’s no use lying to her because she can read me like an open book. I guess that’s what it’s like, knowing someone for half of your life.

We get out of the car, and I grab her stuff from the backseat before following her to the porch of her house. I watch her unlock the front door and enter the foyer. Instinctively, I follow her inside.

“You can set the stuff out here,” she whispers softly, but even then it sounds like her voice is echoing throughout the whole house. “I’m... leaving tomorrow morning.” Even in the gloom, illuminated by a single streetlight just outside the window, I can see her looking away, as if she’s suddenly uncomfortable having me in her own house.

I try to imagine her as the girl I first held hands with back in 1997. For the first time in my life, I’m struggling. I don’t know when it happened, but one day she stopped being the Tessa I remember. Or maybe, she’s still the same, and I just don’t recognize her anymore. Everything about that Tessa is gone. All the softness of her features have left her and now she looks at me with sharp eyes and I look back at sharp lips and sharp cheekbones. The cute spackling of freckles on the bridge of her nose have disappeared, replaced with unblemished, porcelain skin. She stopped dying her hair a couple of years ago, and it grew back a midnight black. Her eyes are still as brilliant and as green as ever, but I’m almost afraid I don’t recognize the person behind it. Everything she does is grown-up and mature and... _different_. I forget that she’s nineteen now, and that she doesn’t _need_ to tell me everything, and she doesn’t _need_ me to help her anymore, and she doesn’t _need_... me.

I see her eyes searching me in the same way I'm searching her. She must be thinking the same thing.

I feel my heart skip. How have we grown into strangers? So quickly—

“I love you,” she says suddenly. As if she said it without thinking.

I inhale sharply. Did I hear her right?

I feel her warmth radiate into me as she buries herself in my arms. I press myself into her, closing my eyes and thinking that—then again, in some fascinating ways, nothing has changed at all.

Before I know it, we’re kissing in the dark, and just like everything else about her, I feel like I’m kissing someone completely new. But it’s okay. No, it’s _better_ than okay. Because the Tessa I knew never felt like this. This Tessa has an intense heat in her skin and when I slip my hand under her clothes, she moans, and this Tessa jumps onto me and wraps her legs around me like she has something to prove, and how she’s running her mouth down my jawline and I feel her teeth meet my collarbone—

Time is spinning out of my senses. I’m in a daze and I’m in her bedroom all at the same time. She's pinned down on the mattress. I hear her whisper my name and all the hairs on the back my neck stand up.

I slide my hand down her pants and let my fingers explore her. She says my name again and I'm convinced that I'm hallucinating or dreaming or... or... Something about this is so strange and so _wrong,_ but at the same time it feels like every star in the sky is aligning and every piece is falling into place. We shrug off our clothes without saying a word and I’m kissing all the parts of her that I’ve only dreamed about. Her slender fingers tangle into my hair as I let my mouth run all over her body, taking in all the different ways she smells and tastes and feels.

As I enter her, I'm hit with the thought—has she done this with someone else before?— _no, stop, don't_. Who? When? ...How? _Stop killing yourself, man_. Do I know him? And why don’t I know him? Why wouldn’t she tell me?

These aren’t particularly sexy thoughts to have while in bed with someone, but I can’t help it. I almost ask her, and it takes everything in me to stay quiet. _It’s not important_. Because _this_ is what _it_ is now. 

I watch Tessa’s eyes flutter shut. Her back arches and her hands fist her bedsheets as I go deeper and deeper. No, it doesn’t matter if she’s done this with someone else before. It doesn’t matter if she has her secrets now. It doesn’t matter that she has her bags packed and ready on the doorstep and she’s leaving me in twenty-four hours.

Because right _now_ , she’s completely and utterly mine.

 

**"10"**

They do everything in their power to teach you how to get along with your dance partner, but nobody mentions anything about what to do when they’re gone.

My alarm goes off at 5 am, as it always does.

_Day twenty-six._

First thing I do is check my phone.

 _No messages_.

I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling for a little longer.

My second alarm goes off at 5:30. Now I really gotta get my ass out of bed and start moving.

I drag myself out of bed, all my muscles screaming in protest. I’m so uncharacteristically tired that I feel compelled to call Marina and just tell her that I’m sick and can’t come in today.

 _Don’t do that_ , I scold myself. _You need to go to practice. Future you will thank you for it. Do it for Tessa_.

I say that to myself everyday, and every day it seems to get less and less effective.

I check my phone again before getting into the shower. _No messages._

Granted, I haven’t heard anything for weeks, so I don't know why I expect anything different today. The last time I heard about her, Marina got a call from Kate, and apparently the surgery went fine, and Tessa is recovering nicely. Then I get a call from Kate a few days later, and she says the same thing. Tessa’s fine, surgery’s fine, everything’s fine.

 _Everything’s fine_ , I repeat to myself as I get to the rink and rummage the janitor’s closet for a mop, a broomstick, a shovel—anything. I find a broomstick that I hope he doesn’t mind me taking—er, borrowing—and it comes with me to practice. Makeshift Tessa is definitely not as glamorous as Real Tessa, but she has to do for now.

I hear laughter and I look behind me to see Meryl and Charlie out of the corner of my eye. They _were_ trying to figure out a new lift they’d been talking about with Marina, but now I see Meryl hanging upside down as Charlie’s holding her up by her ankles. She’s screaming at him to let her down, and he’s laughing so hard his blonde mop is shaking.

I feel a pang of bitterness hit me. I watch them untangle from each other and resume practice, holding each other’s hands, looking happy as clams as they whiz right past me.

I sigh and give up on trying to practice with Broomstick Tessa. I toss her to the side. Sorry buddy.

Slapping on my skate guards, I go and check my phone again. _No messages_.

 _Just call her, you idiot_. No, I can’t just... _call_ her. What if she’s busy? What if she’s asleep? It’s only eight in the morning. She’s probably taking this time to rest and get all those sleep-ins she’s been dreaming about since we moved to Canton. What would we say anyway? _Hey everything’s great without you? How are you? Miss you?_ All of these sound fucking terrible.

I’m frustrated. I push down an irritated growl forming in the back of my throat and sit down on the bleachers. I watch Meryl and Charlie skate for a little bit, feeling despair in my chest every time they nail a twizzle sequence or make their lifts look especially good. _That should be me,_ I think. _Me and Tessa._ That should be _us_.

I can’t believe she hasn’t called or texted at _all_. I feel like I’m forgetting what she looks and sounds like with each passing day.

I bury my head in my hands. I can’t believe I’m letting it bother me this much. I can’t believe I miss her... _this much_.

 _Well, you haven’t called or texted her either_.

I get irrationally pissed off at this voice of reason that just suddenly waltzed right into my head. Hey, _she’s_ supposed to be the one giving me updates on her life.  _She’s_ supposed to call _me_. What am I supposed to update her on? She knows I’m here doing the same damn thing we’ve been doing every day for the past ten years, so that’s not exactly thrilling. It’s not exactly _news_.

 _You should drive up there and visit her this weekend._ No. _No, she would hate that._ She’s probably still on crutches or something, and what am I going to do? Sit there and spoon feed her yogurt?

I mean, I don’t mind spoon feeding her yogurt. But that’s beyond the point.

I hear Marina say something at me from across the rink and I hustle to my feet and drag myself back onto the ice. Marina’s patience with me has been wearing _very_ thin lately, and I can’t blame her. Without Tessa, I honestly look and feel dead out of place here. I don’t mind practicing with broomsticks or sandbags, but after a while, I really start craving the human companionship of a person. A _girl._ A pretty girl.

Okay, what I’m really trying to say is that I miss Tessa (a lot) and I think I’m going a little crazy thinking about her day in and day out. _It’s hard not to though._

I decide to practice our twizzles—well, I guess it’s _my_ twizzles now that Tessa’s out of the picture—over and over until my brain feels like it’s going to fall out of my ears. Every time I exit out of them, I expect to see Tessa on the other side, cueing me into the next one out of habit. But she’s not there, and I have to pretend she is.

“Hey man,” Charlie says as he grabs me from behind. I almost jump. I didn’t even hear him coming.

“Hey,” I try to laugh it off, but I see Meryl smirking in the back and I know she saw me startle.

“Meryl and I are getting lunch. Wanna come with?” Charlie asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “Be right there.”

“Cool.” Charlie claps me on the back and the two of them leave the rink. I hear them laughing at some joke they exchange with each other, the sound echoing around the building and getting on my last sad, jealous, lonely nerve.

I check my phone again as I get to the bleachers.

 _One missed call_.

My heart leaps out my chest. Hands shaking so hard I’m afraid I might drop the the phone, put it to my ear and listen to it ring. And ring. And ring.

It rings out, and I hear Tessa’s voicemail message. “ _Hey it’s Tessa Virtue! I can’t come to the phone right now, please leave a message after the beep!”_

 _Beep_.

“ _Sorry, this mailbox is full and cannot receive messages at this moment_ ,” came an automated voice, and the line goes dead.

I stand there in silence, feeling unexpected tears prickling at my eyes. I dial my voicemail box in a last-ditch attempt to salvage whatever we had there for a second, hoping— _praying_ —that she’d left me a message.

The voicemail responds. “ _You have... no messages_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So begins... The Very Messy Times™.


	3. part three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally! Sorry this took forever, real life is pesky and gets in the way. Please enjoy!

**"11"**

    I spent the last three months of my life picturing my reunion with Tessa in a million different ways. It probably doesn’t take a genius to guess that _this_ , this is not even close to how I pictured it going down.

     The five of us are seated around the dinner table in Tessa’s dining room. Jessica is keeping up a lively conversation with Jim and Kate. Tessa’s looking very involved with her green beans. I’ve completely lost my appetite, but Kate’s cooking is always so good... maybe I should try to eat something...

    “Jess,” I begin.

    “Yes?” Jessica and Tessa both respond immediately.

    I hesitate, feeling myself cringe at the awkwardness that immediately settles around the dinner table. “Sorry. _Jess_. Jessica,” I clarify. _Someone please kill me._ “Can you pass the potatoes?”

    “Sure thing, babe,” she says as she gives me the bowl. Tessa studies this interaction with great interest. I try not to look at her.

    Kate is apologizing for the timing of this whole thing. “I’m sorry Scott,” she says, “I thought you were still in Michigan when we planned this dinner. I wouldn’t have made you and Jessica drive all the way here if we’d known!”

    “We thought about having a bigger dinner party in Canton, but Tessa says she really just wanted to have it at home,” Jim adds, “with you, of course.”

     _Thanks, Jim._ “I was just visiting Jessica for the weekend. Wouldn’t have missed this for the world.” If I make my voice any smaller I’ll literally shrink into myself. “My car broke down so... she’s my unofficial chauffeur for now.” I give a playful, albeit forced laugh. “Hopefully not for long.”

    “As long as you help pay for gas,” Jessica responds, winking at me.

    “Now when did this,” Jim points to me and Jessica with his fork, “start?”

    I throw Jessica a glance. “It was only a couple months ago, I think...”

    “Feels like longer!” Jessica sighs, cupping her face in her hands as she gives me her best smile. “We’ve done so much in such a short amount of time...”

    “Excuse me,” Tessa interrupts quickly as she pushes her chair out from the table. I watch in dread as she disappears out of the dining room and into the hallway. I see the light of the bathroom turn on and the door close behind her.

    “She’ll be fine,” Kate says. “These pain meds that they gave her always make her a little woozy, but she says she’s getting used to them. I wouldn’t worry.”

     _The drive is eight hours, and we get there right by nightfall. We pull up into the Virtues’ driveway, and just as we get out of the car, the headlights of another appear down the street, heading towards us. I blink, recognizing the silver SUV as it hunkers down the road and rattles on the speed bumps. It turns into the driveway, and as the engine is turned off, I see Kate and Jim climb out of the car with arms full of last-minute groceries. Tessa follows them, her gray peacoat flapping in the wind._

     _The first thing I notice is a bouquet of white roses, tucked under her arm. The second thing is how skinny she looks—Tessa has always been slender, but she really looks like a sack of skin and bones. Besides noticing how completely exhausted she looks, I can almost feel the quiet, arching fatigue radiating off of her in waves._

     _But. But. Her green eyes light up when she sees me, as they always do, and when she smiles at me I feel my heart lurch and I finally allow myself to remember how much I’ve missed her._

    My stomach clenches. Potatoes are definitely not cooperating.

    “I’m sorry,” I say, excusing myself from the table. “Be right back.”

    I’m headed down their hallway towards the powder room. The walls are decorated with dozens and dozens of pictures—pictures of Tessa and I, from when we were just little kids to our most recent podium moment, arms wrapped around each other and beaming at the camera, flashing our medals for the world to see. Divinely happy to just be together in our smallest moments of victory.

    The bathroom door creaks open and I see Tessa emerge. She startles slightly when she sees me in front of her. Her pale face is flushed, and I see the faintest trace of red-rimmed eyes that betrays her inner-most emotions.

    For a heartbeat, we just sort of stare at each other. Tessa’s expression is stone-cold, revealing nothing, in the uncanny way that she always is. Then, finally, she allows it to twist into the beginnings of a scowl, before she pushes it down and buries it somewhere deep inside her. She nods curtly, and brushes past me as quickly as she can.

    But I saw it in her eyes. There are some things even she can’t hide from me.

    I close the bathroom door behind me. The darkness encloses me. For a moment, I let my emotions flood me, and I feel hot tears forming underneath my closed eyelids. I scold myself to get it together, before flipping on the light and dealing with whatever I’m going to find in the mirror.

    Instead, I see something in the trash can behind me.

    Crouching down, I pull a bouquet of perfect white roses out from the bin.

    I turn it over to see a card. Plain, white cardstock, decorated with silver snowflakes. I can see where Tessa added little doodles of skates and chocolate and hearts and little figures of what I presumed to be me and her. Finished off with a blue ribbon, scrawled over in her perfect handwriting, two words that made me bury it back into the trash as quickly as I’d found it. _To Scott._

 

**"12"**

    “Hey, dancer boy,” someone yells at me as a massive hand comes down and clamps me on the back. I almost spill my drink. “Your girlfriend’s been in the bathroom for like, an hour. Get her outta there, bud. I need to shit.”

    At first I think he’s talking about Jessica, but then I realize it must be Tessa, because Jessica can hold her liquor, _and_ she’s standing beside me, so it must be Tessa. Tessa is good at a lot of things, but drinking is not her forte.

    I thank the skier—sledder—skater— _whoever_ —and attempt to push my way through this massive crowd of people. The music is deafening loud, and I’m trying to stay out of everybody’s jostling arms and elbows as the blinding lights flash in my eyes. If you’ve ever wondered what Olympic athletes do when the liquor starts flowing and the music starts going, you just have to take a look at Canada House right now and revel in the... peak... of professionalism.

    (I love it.)

    I momentarily forget where I’m supposed to be headed. _Bathroom_. Right, check. Okay, _which_ bathroom? Do I have to send myself on a mission to knock on every bathroom door until I find the one Tessa is in?

    Where could that girl have possibly gone? When we’d arrived at the party, she’d been by my side, but once Jessica showed up, she’d disappeared into the crowd faster than I could blink. I know Tessa hadn’t been too keen on going out. I couldn’t believe she’d want to stay in while literally every other athlete in a 5-mile radius was partying it up. Everyone else was about to have the biggest nights of our lives—at least, that’s what I told her so she’d come out with us.

    “The biggest night of our lives is _after_ we win the Olympics,” Tessa corrected me, with a well-timed roll of her eyes to follow, but soon she conceded, putting on the skimpiest dress I’ve ever seen her wear, strutting out after me in glittery, six-inch heels.

    “ _Damn_ Virtch, we all know what you’re after tonight.” I had a hard time taking my eyes off of her.

    “Yeah, well, you’re not the only one who’s allowed to get some of that.” And with a cutting smile, she ends the conversation.

    God damnit, where _is_ that girl? I knock on the first bathroom door I can find. Hopefully it’s a bathroom and not a closet or something, because it’s dark and I can’t see jackshit. “Tessa?” I call into the door as I knock again.

    “Ugh,” comes the response, and it literally could’ve been any other drunken twenty-something year old girl at this party, but something tells me it’s gotta be Tessa. It just comes with the territory after knowing someone for thirteen years.

    I open the door. There she is.

    “Don’t,” she warns me, drunkenly holding up a finger at me. I close the door behind us as she heaves into the toilet bowl.

    “ _Kiddo_ ,” I say anyway, crouching down to help her get the hair out of her face. “And you call yourself a Canadian?”

    “Fuck off,” she slurs as she, once again, loses her dinner into the toilet. She groans, propping her elbow on the toilet seat, and throws me an agonized look.

    “Fucking hell, Tess.” I grab toilet paper from the wall and try to clean up her face. “Take it easy.” I suddenly feel like I’m back in Canton, trying to comfort a hungover teenage Tessa the morning after one of our drunken escapades. “I’ll take you home after this.” I run my fingers through her hair, combing out the knots and tangles that’d formed after a wild night of dancing.

    She’s beautiful. Even when we’re on the floor of someone’s bathroom, and she’s caked with tequila and bad decisions, all I can see is a lazy weekend morning, watching her chest rise and fall as she sleeps through the sunrise.

    I must’ve said what I was thinking out loud, because her green eyes, once hazy and unfocused, harden with a deep resentment. “You’re not taking me home.” She grabs the toilet paper from me and tries to clean the lipstick off of her mouth.

    I blink. The harshness of her tone stings. “Tess,” I begin.

    “ _Don’t_ call me that,” she snaps, pushing herself to her feet. She glares at me. “Go back to the party, Scott,” she says, and I can hear her voice quivering as she attempts to keep her composure. “I’m sure your girlfriend misses you.” She thinks I can’t see her mouth something uncharacteristically vicious under her breath.

    Now I’m angry. “Are you really trying to pick a fight right _now_?” I demand, grabbing her arm before she can open the door. And now I’m furious. “Can’t your hissy fit wait til after this is over?” My words are broken and my voice is rising in pitch. “ _News flash_ , we kind of have to act like _we’re in love_ for four and a half minutes in front of a billion people tomorrow? So if you can at least _try_ not to make everything about this harder than it already needs to be—”

    Tessa snatches her arm out from my grip. I know I’ve done it. She looks like she could murder me right here and not feel an ounce of regret. I wince slightly, expecting her to unleash it all on me. The night started out so well. I can’t believe that everything we’ve worked for has devolved into this.

    But Tessa lets the moment pass. Then she throws open the bathroom door, and the sound of the party hits me again at full blast.

    “That’s never something I worry about,” is all she says. I watch as she marches right up to a guy with blonde hair and a scraggly beard—someone I’ve never seen before, and throw her arms around his neck, planting a sloppy, drunken kiss on his mouth.

    I lean against the door frame, still watching her from where she left me.

 

**"13"**

    Tessa drops my hand the moment we’re out of sight of the cameras.

    “Are you okay?” I ask, genuinely concerned at the intensity of her reaction.

    She ignores me.

    Something about her silence winds me up so tightly that I snap. And I snap hard. Even though I know I’m fighting a losing battle, I follow her into her dressing room in an act of defiance. It’s empty—of course it’s empty, all the other skaters are out competing right now, because they didn’t withdraw in the middle of the competition—

    I know Tessa’s dressing room is _her_ place, a sacred place where only her secrets and her thoughts are allowed. So I may as well have seen her naked (which I have, I mean—) when I fling open the door and grab her arm, because she gives me a half-surprised, half-horrified stare before her face morphs into a bitter display of resentment. The lights on the mirrors are bright and and they illuminate her teary, but nevertheless still angry, face, as I drag her into position in front of me.

    “I asked you, _are you okay_?” I surprise myself at how forceful my voice sounds, and how aggressively I’m gripping her wrist as I feel her try to move away from me.

    “What answer is going to make you go away?” she practically spits back at me.

    “This _has_ to stop,” I growl, clenching my teeth to force myself not to yell. “We need to talk.” I kick the door of the room shut. “We’ve needed to talk for the past two years but I guess we’re really not so great at that. But we’re talking. Right now.”

    Tessa’s eyes flash dangerously, but she says nothing. Good ol’ Tess, giving me the silent treatment.

    “I thought,” I begin, struggling to contain my anger, “that winning the gold in Vancouver would fix all this. Obviously I was wrong, because you still act like I’m stabbing you in the back every time I do _anything_. What the _hell_ is going on, Virtch?” I hear my own voice breaking. “What happened to you? I thought we were a team. Everything I do is for us. Don’t you _trust_ me anymore?!”

    The silence is so thick you can run a knife through it.

    “Don’t play stupid,” I hiss, finally losing my patience.

    She glares at me. “ _I’m_ playing stupid?” she demands. She straightens herself and whips her hand out of my grip. She draws herself up, ready for a fight. Tears are flooding down her face now. The last time I saw her cry was when she was twelve, in a remarkably similar situation, and I can’t help but think it’d be sufficient to say I felt like we’ve completely reverted back to that. She balls her hands into fists. “I went through the worst two years of my life. I was _alone_ in that hospital room, day in, day out, and you never called, you never checked in to see if I was still breathing. But that was okay, because I forgave you, because I _loved_ you— _I don’t lie_ about those kinds of things.” She stops to take a shaky breath, her eyes narrowing into two green slits. I feel them cutting into my soul. “And when I finally get back, I find that it’s taken you two seconds to move onto someone more convenient, and I think, oh, well, that’s probably why he hasn’t been calling. Because he’s busy sleeping with _other girls_.”

    I blink. “I—”

    “And you didn’t even know,” she interrupts, wiping her cheek with her sleeve. Mascara streaks her face, “I was in pain every waking moment, but good teammates don’t complain about that, and good teammates don’t complain about how her partner goes to parties with his girlfriend every single night during the Olympics, while _she_ couldn’t even walk down a flight of stairs to the cafeteria.”

    “Tess—”

    “So I just sucked it up, because that’s what I’m good at, apparently,” Tessa continues, her voice hoarse from yelling and tight with rage and breaking from the bitterness that’s welling up from inside of her, pooling down her feet and spilling into my heart. “I sucked it up this entire season when, again, I was alone in a hospital room, and I’m in pain everyday, but now somehow I can’t suck it up anymore, so I’ve absolutely humiliated myself in front of the entire world.” She plops herself down on the nearby loveseat and starts yanking off the laces on her skates. “And all the while, the one person who should know what I’m feeling and what I’m going through has no _idea_.” She rips off her left boot and throws it at my feet. “Because after this, he’s probably going to leave and have a _lovely_ night with his girlfriend, while I go and lie in bed for the next three days, trying to undo the cramps in my leg that I’ve probably ruined forever thanks to this sport, and trying to remember why I didn’t just throw in the towel and fucking retire.” She chucks her other boot at me. “So to answer your question, _no_ , I am _not_ okay, and I haven’t been okay for a _very_ long time, and if _you”—_ the word drips with venom— “had taken any time out of your own, selfish life to even see me, or even _ask_ me how I am, how I _really_ am, you wouldn’t even _need_ to ask if I’m _okay_.”

    She finishes, and I can see the anger deflating from her shoulders, and she suddenly looks so exhausted. She curls up in a ball on the loveseat and covers her eyes with her arm. “That’s all,” she mutters, her voice barely audible.

    I find myself making my way towards her, trying to close this gaping hole between us that’d suddenly appeared—or maybe it’d always been there but I’d been too oblivious, too _scared_ to walk over it because I’m afraid to fall. I know I’d hurt her, and every step from the door to her small, trembling body feels like stepping on a million thorns.

    Kneeling on the cushion, I’m closer to her than I’d been in years. She peers up at me, her expression sullen and defeated, as if she’d stopped caring about what was going to happen next. The thought scares me so much that my chest tightens and my eyes prickle with the threat of tears.

    I cautiously lay a hand on her shoulder. Her skin is cold. She doesn’t resist my touch. She doesn’t do anything. She’s spent.

    I slide my arm around her body and pull her into a gentle embrace. I feel the side of her head lightly brush my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I whisper as I cautiously press a kiss onto her temple. And another one on her cheek. And one on her nose. And one on her eyelids as it flutters shut.

    I keep kissing her face and I can feel myself breaking through the walls she’d put up over the days and months and years. Walls to keep me out, but most importantly, keep herself in. They’d all crumbled in the last few minutes, and the dust is settling, and what I’m seeing is the aftermath. “I’m sorry, Tessa,” I repeat, pressing the words into her skin as if they’ll somehow magically fix everything that’s been broken. “You’re the most important person in my life.” My voice is quiet. “I’d never do anything to hurt you. Please believe me.” I rub her shoulders as a final gesture of goodwill, and then get up to leave her alone.

    But she grabs me and pulls me into a deep, sincere kiss, straight on the lips with no hesitation and no regret. I feel her trembling against me as I taste her salty tears on my tongue, and there’s nothing I can do but kiss her back, because I realize there’s nobody in the world I love more than the girl I’d inadvertently neglected and bruised and hurt and broken.

    I just don’t know how to say it.

 

**"14"**

    The drive from Canton to Ann Arbor is twenty-five minutes, but somehow within those twenty-five minutes, I get pulled over.

    Tessa is silently laughing at me from the passenger seat as I give my license and registration to the cop, and I make a face at her as I wait for him to write me the goddamn ticket and sent us on our merry way. She leans against her head against the window, her amused gaze never leaving me.

    “I see which side you’re on, Virtch,” I comment. “You can walk the rest of the way.”

    Just as Tessa playfully threatens to open the car door to the highway, the cop clears his throat and thrusts the ticket into my face. “Sir,” he grumps. “Have a good night.”

    “Jesus,” I say after he leaves. I start the engine of my car again, tossing the ticket onto the backseat. “I didn’t deserve that.”

    “Oh yes you did,” Tessa says, never giving me a second to defend my (in her opinion) terrible driving.

    “And I’m gonna do it again so we can get to the movie on time,” I say. Tessa’s smirking as we pull back into the lane and continue down the road. She rolls down the windows, letting the cool night wind whip through her long hair. She closes her eyes and leans back into the seat, her hair flying everywhere, in a perfect snapshot of messy, carefree imperfection.

    I think about how happy she looks.

    The summer lull between seasons is secretly one of my favorite times. Not that I don’t enjoy skating, but I’m always completely spent by the end of the competitive season, and the last one—as you may know—was particularly brutal. There’s nothing I look forward to more than sitting around and doing nothing for a solid month. But our break’s been cut short this year, as it’d been the year before. We have a schedule jam-packed with shows and tours, and while I enjoy doing them, Tessa’s the one who really adores it. It makes me wonder what would’ve happened if she’d chosen to do ballet instead, and gone down a different path in life. I wonder if she’d been happier, not having to deal with all the bullshit that comes with ice dance, day in and day out.

    But then again, she might’ve had a completely different set of demons altogether.

    I sneak a glance at her. She’s staring out the window now, cupping her chin, looking particularly thoughtful.

    “What are you thinking about?” I ask her, returning my attention to the road.

    She shifts in her seat. I look at her again, and she’s smiling. Not one of her camera smiles, not one of her show smiles. A soft, sincere, quiet smile that radiates from somewhere deep inside her. “Nothing at all,” she replies, content, the words disappearing into the wind rushing through the windows.

    After the breakdown during our previous (disastrous) season, nothing makes me happier than to hear those words.

    We set up our little picnic blanket on the grass, slightly damp from the dew collecting in the evening chill. The light of the giant outdoor screen flickers onto our faces. I swat away the bugs circling around our heads. I can hear Tessa humming along to the music as she smooths out the fleece under her legs and pulls out her little bag of dried cherries. We’re twenty minutes late, but Tessa’s already seen this movie a thousand times, like she’s done with every other Audrey Hepburn movie. I, on the other hand, am lost, but I find it hard to pay attention to what’s going on in the film anyway, when she’s sitting so close to me.

    I slide my arm around Tessa’s waist and pull her closer. She leans into me, resting her head on my shoulder. I smell the scent of her perfume, feel her hair ticking my face as she nuzzles my neck. The crickets chirp rhythmically over the sound of the movie. I close my eyes for a moment.

    “‘ _S wonderful_ ,” Fred Astaire says.

    “‘S _wonderful_ ,” Audrey Hepburn agrees.

    And it really is.

    It’s probably two in the morning when we finally return to Canton. I walk Tessa up to her door, as I always do.

    “That was fun,” she says to me as she unlocks the door, her voice soft over the chirping of crickets.

    “It was,” I agree, leaving her a goodbye kiss on the forehead. “Sleep tight now, princess.” I turn to head down the porch steps, fiddling in my pockets for my car keys.

    “Wait,” Tessa says, her fingers brushing my sleeve as she reaches out to catch me.

    I turn to her. “Yeah?” I ask.

    She bites her lip, her eyes reflecting the glittering starlight as they lock into mine. “It’s late,” she begins, slowly, hesitantly. “If you want to crash here, you can.” She pauses. “Just so you don’t have to drive all the way back to your place. You know. Whichever you want to do.”

    I grin at her until I see the faintest blush creeping onto her cheeks. She just shakes her head, but gives me a knowing look, and slips into the house, leaving the door open for me. I lock my car and follow her in.

    She pulls a couple of pillows and blankets out from storage boxes in the living room, and tosses them onto the couch—the customary crashing location at her place, one that I was deeply familiar with, given all the times I’d found my way there after having too much to drink. “Thanks,” I say. “Good night, Tess.”

    “Night,” she responds. She disappears to the bathroom, and hear her running the water as she gets ready for bed. With her gone from the room, I kick off my pants and toss my shirt onto the floor. I slip under the covers and close my eyes, suddenly incredibly tired. I fall asleep almost immediately, and I would’ve been out like a light if I didn’t hear something scuffling into the living room.

    Opening one eye, I see Tessa again, this time in her night clothes, clambering onto the couch.

    “Mm,” I say tiredly, reaching out to catch her arm.

    “Hi,” she whispers. I feel her body press up against mine as she lies down next to me, pulling the covers up to her chin. If I’d been more awake, I probably would’ve made some comment about how uncharacteristic this is for her, but I’m already half-asleep, so I let her win this time. I wrap my arm around her waist, sighing quietly as I settle into the curves of her body.

    I hear Tessa murmur something.

    I open my eyes. “Hmm?”

    “Thank you.”

    I close my eyes again as I bury my nose into the crook of her neck. “For what?” I whisper.

    I wait for her to respond, but her slow, even breathing tells me that she’s drifted off to sleep.

 

**"15"**

    I’ve given up trying to sleep the night before the free dance portion of Worlds, because it’s been same result for the past three years—me, lying in bed until the sun starts to rise, staring up at the ceiling of the hotel room, wide awake with a million things running through my mind.

    Except this time I’m lying on a rickety old mattress, staring up at the ceiling of the Virtues’ guest bedroom. I stare and stare, until the clock on the beside table hits about four in the morning, and then I give in and get up.

    I creep down the stairs of Tessa’s old family home, listening to the familiar creaks in the wood as I navigate through the dark. I feel like I’m ten years old again, shredding through their house while Mom yells at me to stop running and the dogs bark and Tessa laughs at me from the top of the banister, once again managing to evade me in our aggressively competitive game of tag. I always got her, eventually, and tickle her until she pleaded for mercy, or kicked me in the stomach. Never underestimate how hard Tessa kicks.

    I see a shadow moving through the foyer as I came down the stares. I see Tessa look up at me as she grabs her coat from the rack. In the dark, I can see her eyebrows raise in surprise. “Scott?” she whispers.

    “Hey kiddo,” I whisper back.

    She puts on her coat, giving me a little smile as she pulls her hair out from under the collar. “You’re up early,” she comments.

    “Couldn’t sleep,” I say, wrapping my arms around her.

    “Oh, same,” she sighs. She hugs me back, laying her head on my shoulder. I hear her hum into my shirt. “I was going out to clear my head.” She gives my hand a little squeeze. “Come with me.”

    I can never say no to Tessa, especially when she doesn’t give me a choice. I’m half-perplexed, half-frustrated at how attractive that is.

    I bundle up and head into the wintery night, ducking my head into my scarf as the icy winds whip around us, spraying powdered snow into our faces.

    “Glad to see London hasn’t changed,” Tessa grunts into the collar of her coat, heading into the wind. I feel her petite hand slip into my coat pocket, her fingers finding mine. We hold hands the rest of the way.

    The “way” is a painfully cold stroll through a silent city, with empty streets and blacked out storefronts, accompanied only by the whistle and moan of the wind through the alleys.

    And we talk. Or at least, we try to, without freezing our lips off in the negative temperatures. I hang onto Tessa’s warm hand in my pocket for dear life.

    We amble on, with no particular destination in mind, until we find ourselves going down a familiar path towards a familiar building.

    “Oh,” I hear Tessa say to herself, the smallest, breathless sound coming from under her scarf.

    The church, covered in snow and a dark shadow against the night sky, stands in the same place as it’d always been. The familiar gravel path crunch underneath our boots as we head up the winding road to the cul-de-sac.

    It’s a surreal, out-of-body moment, where I stop being myself for a second and become my twelve-year-old self, my eyes fixed on the road, waiting for a car to pull up in the early morning light, wondering why I’m up so early, and if the heater in the car will be working.

      “We’re back,” Tessa whispers, as we draw closer to the benches in front of the building. I’m not sure if she’s speaking to me, or to the church. I have a feeling it’s the latter.

    We slow our pace in front of the church doors. Tessa heads over to the bench and sits down. I follow her, putting my arm around her shoulders, and we both sit and stare out into the empty cul-de-sac. The faintest light of dawn begins to wash the road in a pale gray.

    Tessa glances up at me, and I find myself trying to decipher the look in her eyes and she studies my face, tracing it with her eyes, breathing in my presence so intently that I can’t seem to look away. “It’s so strange...” she says. “Isn’t it?”

    I hesitate, unsure what she was talking about exactly. “Yes.”

    I expect her to say something, but she doesn’t.

    “Aw, Tess,” I say, lightheartedly, pulling her hand out of my pocket and giving it a quick kiss. “So sentimental.”

    She chuckles. “Am I really?” she sighs. She shakes her head. “I guess I am.”

    “You’re way too sentimental for your own good,” I comment, putting her hand back in my pocket and weaving my fingers into hers once more. “Think about it like this. Two crazy kids with one crazy dream. It all started here. We’re back now, and we have our dream.”

    She smiles, but it’s a smile tinged with sadness. “I think I’ve finally come to terms with that,” she begins, slowly. “Having achieved the childhood dream. And that was three years ago.” She looks up at the overcast sky. “And I wonder to myself sometimes... is that it? For me? Is _this_ it? What am I even going to do after Sochi?” She lets out a long-winded sigh. “I can’t seem to figure anything out anymore. Can you even have a _new_ dream in your mid-twenties?”

    “Of course you can. Outside of skating, yeah,” I reassure her, surprised at how suddenly she opened up. Tessa is a secretive person, never letting anyone—even me—in on more than a little bit of a time, but on rare occasions I see more into her than she allows the rest of the world to. “I mean...” I hesitate. “I’ve always wanted to... do the whole family thing. At some point. You know? Get married. Have some ankle-biters. You know.” I cough slightly. Tessa and I never talk about relationships outside of our own, so when the topic comes up, I find myself barely able to get through it.

    “Hm,” is all Tessa says, but she looks thoughtful. “Cassandra?”

    I feel my face flush. “Well, we haven’t been dating for _that_ long,” I say to her, hearing an edge of defensiveness creep into my voice. “But I mean, I dunno... Maybe? It’s a nice thought sometimes, settling down after all this craziness is over.” I cringe inwardly. This is getting uncomfortable.

    Tessa pulls her knees to her chin. “Right,” she says, definitively ending the conversation. Thank God.

    I give her hand another squeeze. “You have time,” I say earnestly.

    Tessa nods slightly. She’s disappeared from the conversation. A deep silence settles between us.

    She finally breaks it after a few minutes. “Doesn’t it still feel like you’re waiting for someone to come pick you up?” she murmurs, her gaze locked back onto the cul-de-sac.

    I suck in a breath. “Yeah,” I agree, “but I don’t know where we’d go if they did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not intend to put you through this emotional roller coaster but here we are.


	4. part four

**"16"**  

    Tessa’s on her third glass of wine when she brings it up.

    “You’re drunk,” I say in response, because she is, and Tessa usually has the good ideas, but she’s off her game today. I snatch her wine glass away from her.

    “No, I’m serious,” Tessa replies as she grabs the glass back from me. “I might be a _little_ buzzed but I’m not kidding.”

    “You’re drunk,” I try again.

    We’re out having dinner when Tessa tells me she wants me to do a “bridal photoshoot” with her. To which I say, “with you?” and she says, “yes, like I’m the bride and you’re the groom.” To which I say, “let’s talk about it when we get home”, and to which she says “no, Scott, I’m in the zone, just listen...”

    She picks up the check this time.

    “You really want this photoshoot, huh,” I comment as I watch her sign the receipt. I can’t help but stare at her perfect, delicate collarbone. Distractions.

    “It’ll get them talking about us again,” Tessa says as closes her wallet with a resounding _snap_. “If I see another article about how Meryl and Charlie are going to win the Olympics I’m going to _personally_ kick down Marina’s door—”

    “You think she’s in on it?” I ask as I watch Tessa take off her cardigan and hang it on the back of her chair. Her face is flushed with the wine.

    “We’re on our own,” is all Tessa says. “We have to pick our music tomorrow. We’ve been putting it off for way too long.” She glances over at me. “Do you know what Meryl and Charlie are doing?”

    “Something they’ve hidden from us from like, three years ago,” I reply.

    Tessa half-grimaces, half-sighs. “Well, shit,” I hear her say under her breath.

    “Don’t worry,” I tell her, setting my fork down on my plate. “We’ll get up bright and early tomorrow, and go to the rink, and then do what we’ve always done.”

    There’s a long pause. “Hey,” she begins. “How do you feel about a reality show?”

    I furrow my brow, wondering if I just heard her right. “Did you hear what I just said?” I ask, a little irritated.

    “If we start shooting it now, we could have it on air right when the Olympics roll around at the end of the year,” Tessa continues.

    “We should really be focusing on training,” I respond, insistent.

    Tessa makes a frustrated sound. “It’s just a thought,” she says, a little defensively. “I’d be about skating and training for Sochi, of course. Nothing personal. It’s important publicity.”

    I sigh in frustration. “Tess. Think about what you’re saying. Do you really want to make our careers relevant by selling our relationship?”

    Tessa just looks at me. I see the slightest tilt of her chin as she asks, almost defiantly, “what relationship?”

    And that, for some reason, pisses me off.

    “The fake one, obviously,” I fire back, sounding a lot sharper than I wanted to. The nearby table gives us a shifty glance, which immediately makes me regret what I’d just said.

    “Then you have nothing to worry about,” Tessa snaps, equally as quickly.

    “I _have_ a girlfriend, you know.”

    “Congratulations,” Tessa says dryly. “Now you can have a real relationship _and_ the fake one to boot.”

    “Forgive me if I don’t want to give her the wrong idea by pretending to marry some other chick.”

    Tessa deflates. “Some other chick,” she repeats, her tongue running over each syllable like she’d just swallowed a mouthful of needles. _Shit_.

    “You know what I mean,” I snap, irritated as all hell but unable to start another fight with Tessa. I hate fighting with Tessa. I almost always lose. “Let’s go.”

    I give the taxi driver the address of Tessa’s place, because I know it’s going to be one of those nights where I crash on her couch, too heavy with drinks to properly stumble home.

    The first thing Tessa does after we shut the door behind us is kiss me. She tastes like alcohol and a long night. When I open my eyes again to look at her, I find her staring at me. Her face is flushed but her eyes are still sharp, flickering across my face, studying me, emboldened by the wine. _Mine_. She’s reminding me as if I didn’t already know.

    “Did you hear anything I just said back there?” I whisper, grazing her cheek with my thumb.

    “Something about being some other chick,” she murmurs, kissing me again. There is something unkind about the kiss, almost poisonous in her desperation and envy.

    “I’m serious, Tess,” I say quietly, putting my hands on her shoulders, stopping her from taking this too far. “We can’t do the thing where we date other people and then fuck each other on the side. You’re dating someone, I’m dating someone... so let’s just date them and spend _our_ time together getting that gold medal, huh?”

    “Come to bed with me, Scotty,” she says, very apparent in her determination in ignoring whatever I’d just said. “ _Please_?” Her voice is so breathy and high-pitched that it comes out a whine, like a cat in heat. I clench my fists, forcing myself to kill whatever impulse I have to rip off her clothes right there and then.

     _God, what is she doing? Why now?_ I almost tell her I’m done with her games. I’m trying to be better about figuring out my own shit along with everything that’s happening this year, but every time I feel like I’m getting somewhere, something like _this_ happens. An emotional roadblock. An obstacle. The maze winds and twists and turns and I feel like I can never, ever get out of it.

    I bite back a growl of irritation, but I refuse to allow myself to get mad at Tessa. (I can never really be mad at her, anyway.)

    “You’re just drunk,” I say, trying to calm the shaking in my hands and control the blood rushing from my head to the other parts of my body that did not deserve the attention that they are getting at the moment. “And you need to go to bed, preferably _by yourself_. I’ll see you tomorrow at the rink.”

    But she does not let go.

    “I don’t love him,” she confesses in a whisper, her eyes unfocused and hazy from the alcohol, emotions brimming behind them. “I don’t love him, you know?” I feel her hand slip under my neck, her touch electric and sensual. “You’re the only man I’ve ever loved.” I feel her long hair tickle my face as she leans into me. The heat of her body is intoxicating. “Scott...” she murmurs my name as she runs her lips down my neck. Every nerve in my body tingles with delight. “I know you feel the same way.”

    “I-I.” Jesus Christ, Tessa. _What the hell does she mean by all that?_ “I mean, I love you,” I say, like I’ve said a million times before, but the intensity of her language starts to make me uncomfortable, as if she’s demanding that I re-evaluate my own words. “You know that.” _Did she_?

    Tessa pulls away, looking pained. I feel the warmth of her breath on my face, but she doesn’t respond. She just stares and stares at me, expecting me to say more, but I realize I have nothing more to say.

    “Right. Forget it,” I sigh, closing my eyes in defeat. I let her go. I open the door behind us and let myself out into the hallway of her apartment complex. “Good night, Tess. See you tomorrow.”

 

**"17"**

    We’re exhausted.

    Physically, mentally, emotionally. I feel like a limp noodle, even though I can’t be. I _can’t_ be.

    I hang onto Tessa’s hand, like a lifeline, willing her to give me some strength. But she’s drained, and has nothing to offer me. We finish our media interviews, and head back to the Village, silently. Tessa lays her head on my shoulder, closing herself off to the rest of the world. I wish I can do the same, but my head is swirling with thoughts, and I can’t seem to stop thinking.

    In the taxi ride back, I see Tessa and Scott from four years ago, giddy with adrenaline and unable to stop yammering on and on about the skate, because _everything_ was about The Skate. High off the euphoria of their first Olympics, barely able to keep their nerves in check as they picture ourselves as the top of the podium. _Tomorrow will be it_.

    The hotel lobby brings ghosts of two kids, skipping around in clothes that were hardly appropriate for the subzero temperatures, but too exhilarated to care about hypothermia or losing a finger to frostbite, dancing their way to a party where they’ll drink far too much and say too much while thinking far too little about the consequences of their words to one another. _Tomorrow will be everything._

    Tessa’s hotel room fills with past memories of perfume bottles and hairbrushes and clothes and jewelry and shoes, scattered everywhere as Tessa and Scott rummage for something nice to meet the storm of cameras and microphones and media people, desperate to interview the new king and queen of ice dance. _Tomorrow is here_.

    But now. Now I close the door behind us. Tessa unzips her Canada jacket, and folds it into a neat square, and places it on her bed. We exchange a glance. Neither of us say anything, but we both know.

    I follow suit, until we’re no longer wearing our costumes, apart of this establishment that will inevitably failed us, no longer Virtue and Moir, the defending Olympic champions that has a million cameras on their backs and dominate the headlines of the newspapers back at home, but Tessa and Scott. Just Tessa, just Scott. We’re two Canadian kids sitting on a hotel bed, facing each other but not really looking, two regular people who are just so tired, and need a long nap.

    I hear my phone buzz and I see the words of incoming texts filling up my screen. _They totally screwed you over, that score is outrageous— Honey are you alright, please call me whenever you can — I will personally go and kick the judges’ asses for you—_

    I shut off my phone.

    Tessa has scooted closer to me, until her fingers are wrapped in mine again. I close my eyes, and let the sensation of her soft, tender touch wash over me for as long as I can, bringing me back from this place of despair that I’d unconsciously let myself sink into. Only Tessa, with her warmth and light and tangible softness, a feeling without words, can anchor me back to reality. She makes me sane.

    I bring her hand up to my lips. I see her smile, and in her eyes, I know she’s thinking the same thing.

    How lucky I am to have her.

    I run my lips across each of her knuckles, feeling the ridges and the curves of her hands against my mouth, closing my eyes and pressing my nose to the softness of her skin.

    But she pulls her hand away from my lips.

    “You don’t have to,” she says, her voice hoarse from disuse. “Cameras are off, Scotty. You don’t owe me any of that. ”

    The way she says ‘that’ is tinged with bitterness and regret.

    I pause, rubbing her hands between my fingers. “But I want to,” I say quietly, decidedly, not really thinking about the implications of that sentence, but just letting whatever I have stuffed up in my tired brain diffuse into the air. _I’m so tired of putting up these walls_ , I think to myself, just wanting to say whatever the hell I wanted to—I shouldn’t have to lie to _Tessa_ , out of all people.

    “Whatever happens tomorrow,” I say, because I always have something to say, apparently. “Win or lose. Silver or gold. Together.” I squeeze her hand.

    I expect her to gaze up at me with adoration, and echo with me, “together”, as we’ve always done. But Tessa shakes her head and looks away. I can see the faintest glimmer of tears threatening to leak from her eyes. “It’s okay,” she replies, and I can hear the exhaustion in her voice. “When this is all over—when this is all finally done with, I’ll give you your space. I won’t get in your way anymore. I don’t want any more of this.”

    I’m silent, and guilty. I don’t know what to say.

    “We should start getting used to it.” She doesn’t say the word, but I know she means ‘retirement’. “Starting tomorrow, we act like normal, functional people, who don’t need to fuck their dance partners to sort their issues out.” She forces a smile. A thin, watery smile, but a smile nonetheless. “You should call Cassandra or something. Tell her we’re doing great, and we’ll kill it in the free dance tomorrow.” She pats me on my knee, and then gets up.

    “Tessa.” I hear myself breathe her name before I can stop myself. I catch her arm before she can leave. I pull her into my arms. “Tomorrow isn’t here yet.” I hold her, finding her cold, parched lips and kissing them like there _is_ no tomorrow. _So let me have all of you today_ , I think, but I can’t say it with Tessa’s tongue in my mouth. I memorizing her curves and the heat of her body and the way her breath hitches when I slide my fingers up her shirt and under her bra and let my fingers rub her in all the ways I know she likes.

    I can’t remember the last time we’ve had proper sex, but I can remember all the times we didn’t. This intricate dance, with no ice and no audience and no panel of judges, where thoughts get into our heads, and a little too much to drink can send them tumbling out. Where our lips connect and this spark lights inside of us, and we’re kissing and touching and breathing each other in until one of us says, “no, stop, this is wrong, we can’t”, and we struggle to untangle ourselves from each other. Hurt, confused, waiting for our bodies to catch up with our brains.

    This dance ends tonight, and the big finale is in the scent of Tessa’s skin, in the sound of her voice as she murmurs into my ear, secrets that will never leave this bed. It’s in her ghostly fingers as they run down the curve of my back, in those intoxicating eyes, heavy with lust and bright with desire. It’s in the heat between her legs and the way her body fits and molds into me perfectly, like any dance we do, she knows exactly how it goes.

    And so it goes.

    We lie with each other after we finish, in a full and warm silence, wrapped in the darkness and the sheets in between us. Tessa’s curled up in my arms, her head pressed onto my chest, her dark hair tumbling down my body and disappearing under the covers. I hold her, stroking the skin of her neck, running my thumb along her shoulders and down her spine until she hums with drowsy contentment. I realize I’m happy, and I don’t think I’ve felt this happy in a very, very long time.

 

**"18"**

    Tessa is never one to break a promise, but sometimes I wish she could.

    It’s clear that Tessa has a better grasp on how to be a “normal” person, because she’s the one doing the hand-holding and bike-pushing in the months after Sochi. I do what I’ve always done—whatever comes to mind and whatever frees my inhibitions, but I’m quickly learning that the Scott way doesn’t necessarily operate well in the “real world”.

    Kaitlyn has about a 2% grasp of what ice dance really is (“it’s like ballroom dance on ice, right?”), and it doesn’t seem like she’s particularly interested in the other 98% (Cassandra had a 0% grasp on what ice dance really is, so you can say Kaitlyn’s an improvement). I’ve gotten used to it, not necessarily out of good faith and acceptance, but more out of necessity. Because in the real world, nobody really knows what the hell you’ve been doing with your life for the past eighteen years—nor do they really care.

    Tessa loves this. She loves it when her Tinder hookups and when the random guys at bars get her number are content with “oh, you’re a figure skater”, and no more questions are asked. She likes being anonymous, just a pretty girl at the club with really good dance moves, just another student at college with an impeccably good fashion sense.

    I don’t know if I love this Tessa. My heart rate spikes a little bit every time I see her in a Snapchat with a new guy. I get a little tense every time I see her texting someone during our get-togethers.

    But in the end, I have to tell myself that this is who she was always meant to be, before skating got in the way.

     _Skating._ We still skate. We skate shows, we skate events, we do things that require us to put on skates and twirl around the rink to music, but all the while we know that it’ll never be something like Vancouver, or Sochi, or anything in between.

    “Well, _good_ ,” Tessa says emphatically. She hesitates. “Right?”

    We’re sitting at the Toronto airport, soaking in the air con as the temperature rises to a ridiculous 30-something degrees. I’d secretly rather be out in the blazing sun, rather than another sterile, indoor ice box.

    I crinkle my boarding pass between my fingers. A straight flight from Toronto to Edinburgh is almost eight hours. Tessa has an assortment of puzzles, coloring books, movies, and novels stuffed into her backpack for entertainment.

    “Yes, good,” I repeat, less emphatically, to which Tessa nods, more forcefully than she would’ve needed to, but she knows. She knows we both need to be okay with being retired in our mid-twenties. Which I guess is far from normal, but you can’t always have it all. Can you?

    “Well you wouldn’t be able to take a luxury vacation in Scotland if you were still competing!” Kaitlyn chimes in, her voice dauntingly bright.

     _“Well, she’s your girlfriend,” Tessa said when I had cautiously brought up the possibility of bringing Kaitlyn on the trip with us. “Why are you asking me for permission?”_ And that was that.

    I can see Tessa making an obvious effort to be a good friend. Not only to Kaitlyn, but to me. “ _She’s nice,” Tessa commented. “And if you’re happy, I’m happy, so if you want her in your life, then she’s totally welcomed in mine.”_

    Tessa = good grasp on how to be normal. Me, not so much.

    But even with all the Instagram pictures with the two of them and how Tessa’s laughing and volunteering to help Kaitlyn figure out how to hold the rifle properly in our ski shooting expedition, weeks later in Scotland, I can’t help but feel oddly... empty.

    Tessa and I are now scrunched together at the back of a dusty rickshaw, weaving dangerously through the streets of Beijing. We’re hanging on for dear life, breathless and overwhelmed by the sights and smells and the great sense of adventure that travel brings.

    But then I realize I’m not empty—not at this very minute, not when it’s me and Tessa in the back of a rickshaw, bodies pressed together, laughing and enjoying everything this moment has to give to us.

    Our gazes meet.

    The driver drops us off at the bus terminal, where we board the smelliest, rustiest taxi that will apparently take us up to the Great Wall. We cram into this vehicle, we’re off.

    I comment on how I hope I don’t get sick, and joke to Tessa that she’d better be prepared to move out of the way if I hurl up my lunch. Tessa makes a face at me, but moves closer despite it. She shows me a song in her iPhone that sounds like melting clouds and peaking sunrises. “Imagine skating a program to that,” she says wistfully.

    “Oh, you can’t make me go back to Marina even if you put a gun to my head.”

    Tessa laughs, shaking her head. “ _Realistically._ We’d probably find somewhere else to go,” she comments, folding her hands in her lap and looking thoughtful.

    “Realistically?” I repeat, cocking an eyebrow.

    Tessa bites her lip. “Marie and Patch seem to be doing alright up in Montreal,” is all she says, and falls silent.

    The taxi driver honks aggressively and yells something in Chinese at the car that’d just cut him off.

    Tessa inhales. “Scott?”

    “Mhm?”

    “I’m unhappy,” she says suddenly, quietly, so nobody can hear but us.

    Like lightning, like a light switch, like a blink of an eye. And the first thing I can think of is, _me too_.

    “Is this about getting silver in Sochi?” I ask her.

    “No,” Tessa says sharply. “You know that.”

    She’s right.

    We fall silent again.

    “I miss skating,” Tessa begins, and I know I can’t stop her now that she’s started, “I miss competing. I miss creating. I miss the press and the cameras and the pressure and the medals and the stupid rink.” She inhales. “I miss you,” she says, to which I blink, confused, and respond with _I’m right here_ , and instinctively, for the first time in months, holds her hand in the way that I always used to—softly, tenderly, with my thumbs brushing her knuckles and feeling her pulse with the tips of my fingers.

    The way that we agreed to stop doing, because _normal_ people don’t do that, and we have to at least try to fit in with the rest of the world.

    But now she wants it again.

    “I miss having you,” Tessa murmurs, almost embarrassed by what she’d said. She’s suddenly very fascinated with her thumbs, twiddling in her lap as she take a right onto the highway. “I miss... _us_.” She gazes up at me, for emphasis. I catch myself gazing back at her, getting lost in her green eyes for quite some time.

    Maybe these exercises in being normal did some good for me, because I finally get it.

    That night, I tell Kaitlyn it’s over.

    That night, I show up at Tessa’s hotel room.

    “Yes?” she asks as she opens her door, wrapped in a robe, fresh out of the shower. Her brow is furrowed in confusion. “Wasn’t expecting—”

    “Dinner tonight?” I interrupt.

    Tessa hesitates. “Sure?” she asks, confused.

    “It’s a date,” I say.

    Tessa begins to laugh. Then she stops. “Oh,” she says, very seriously. “You’re not kidding.”

    “If we’re going to do this again,” I say, “we’re going to do it right.”

    Tessa just stares at me. Then she breaks out in a smile, her cheeks flushing. “Right,” she agrees, and lets me kiss her.

    Because in the real world, nobody really knows what the hell you’ve been doing with your life for the past eighteen years—nor do they really care.

 

**"19"**

    “No, Scott, the _big_ wooden one goes on Side A,” Tessa says to me, irritated, wiping her sweaty brow and leaving a trail of sawdust on her forehead. “If you look at the these ones—” she holds up the ones that are apparently _not_ the big-wooden-ones “—they’re smaller than the ones in the picture!”

    “The drawings aren’t really to scale,” I insist. “And plus these don’t fit into the holes. And can you crack open the windows? I’m _dying_ in here.” Tessa growls at me as she walks over to the windows and opens them with a huff. The warm, sticky summer air floods into the room. We’re greeted with the ceaseless honking of the midday Montreal traffic.

    I think about how we’d be so much more efficient and less sweaty if we wait to do this _after_ Tessa has her air conditioning installed.

    “We only get 16 of _these_ ones and 8 of _these_ ones,” Tessa stands firm, holding them out in her palms. They’re all starting to look the same to me now, so I nod tiredly. Tessa doesn’t like this, apparently, but she’s also too cranky to be diplomatic, so she puts the pegs in the holes and goes to the next step.

    “Okay, next it says we tighten the screws on this side...” she begins, leaning over the board and peering onto the colored side of the wood. She grabs the screwdriver and gives it a go. I hear a crack.

    “Oh my god,” I say, irritatedly. “Did you break it?”

    She glares at me. “No, the wood just cracked a little bit,” she says defensively as she goes onto the next screw.

    “Be careful,” I say, and I see Tessa mutter something under her breath. I watch as she slides the two sides of her IKEA bed together, her damp hair falling into her face in loose, dark curls.

    She hesitates. “Scott, I think we did the backwards.”

    I rise from my spot opposite of her. “We did what?”

    “Yeah, it’s... completely backwards.”

    “How the hell did we do that?” I hear my own voice echo back to me through the empty apartment.

    “We fucked up,” Tessa snaps, losing her patience. “Obviously. And now we’re going to take it apart and start over.”

    I grab the instruction manual from her and look at it. “It’s fine,” I say, throwing it down after giving the infuriatingly tiny diagrams a second glance. “The colored part will just be on the inside instead of facing out. We’ve been at this for hours. We have to just go on.”

    “No!” Tessa practically hissed, her eyes widening in horror. “What’s the point of buying a _white_ bed if you don’t see the _white_ part of it?”

    “It doesn’t _matter_.”

    “It _does_.”

    I hold my head in my hands. “ _Tess_.”

    “Fine, you can leave and _I’ll_ do it myself,” Tessa retorts, grabbing the hammer from me. She starts yanking out the nails on the side of the board.

    “You can’t put together a queen-sized bed by yourself.”

    “I have three Olympic medals, I think I can handle this.”

    “If you have three Olympic medals why can’t you put _one goddamn bed together—”_

    “Alright, can it,” she interrupts, and I force myself to stop raising my voice at her. She glares back at me, her face beet-red, and not just from the sweltering summer heat. “We’ve already managed to do the rest of the move without clawing each other’s eyes out. We can do this.” She gives the cardboard IKEA box a kick.

    I mop the sweat from my face with the bottom of my t-shirt. “Sorry,” I say.

    She sighs. “I’m sorry too,” she replies.

    We stare at each other from opposite sides of the half-constructed bed lying in the middle of the carpet and a minesweeper arrangement of bolts and screws and pegs and wooden planks scattered around us. Tessa was still clutching the hammer, her neck sweaty and her eyes wide.

    I burst out laughing.

    “Scott,” Tessa admonishes, knitting her brows together in irritation.

    “Come here,” I say, hurdling over the boards and grabbing her in a sweaty hug. She squeaks and drops the hammer.

    “Gross,” she says, but hugs me back, burying her face in my shoulder. I feel her body relax into me. “Sorry again,” she murmurs.

    “We need a break,” I decide, taking her hand after we disentangle from the hug. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

    So we get the hell out of there, blinking in the bright sunlight of a hazy summer afternoon as we walk down the sidewalk from Tessa’s new apartment. We’ve only been in Montreal for a couple of days but we already figured out that if we keep walking down the road, we’d hit an ice cream shop that sells soft-serve cones for dirt cheap. With the humidity sticking to my back like a gum on the bottom of a shoe, I grab Tessa’s arm and make a beeline for that ice cream shop. The building itself is nothing more than a box with a window, but it’s decidedly better than nothing, when all we have in our apartments is an empty fridge and cold showers.

    We make it to the soft-serve place relatively unscathed (only _one_ asshole driver tried to hit us as we were crossing the street—he cussed us out in French and veered away in his rusty 2008 Nissan Versa before I could retaliate. Not that I _could’ve_ said anything back. I only know a total of three words in French anyway). We get our cones and sit together on a nearby park bench, enjoying the ice cream and each other’s company.

    I put my arm around Tessa and pull her close. It’s far too warm for physical contact, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She snuggles into me and we watch the cars pass by on the street.

    “Also,” I whisper into her ear. “I forgot to say back there.”

    Tessa’s gaze flickers to me. “Uh huh?”

    I cup my hand over her ear. “I also have three Olympic medals.”

    She finally laughs.

    I throw my napkin in the trash. “Let’s get back, huh?” I ask. “Try not to stick a nail in my eye while you’re at it.”

    So we return to Tessa’s place with the half-constructed bed and the minesweeper carpet, as hot and as sticky as ever, but everything seems alright with ice cream in our bellies and a good attitude between us. We painstakingly take the bed apart, start over, and reassemble it correctly this time. We fall into the natural groove of our partnership and it goes ten times faster than it went the first time. It’s really a miracle whenever Tessa and I put our minds to something—we could probably take over the world if we really wanted to.

    By the time we finish, it’s dark outside, and the temperature cools and the air is more forgiving. I grunt as I toss the mattress onto the bedframe with a satisfying thud, and throw myself onto it in relief.

    “We did it,” I say, putting my dirty work boots onto the bed.

    “Scott!” Tessa gasps, horrified.

    “Get on here,” I say.

    Tessa looks at her clothes, covered in grime and sawdust.

    “We’re not done yet,” I say.

    “We’re not?” Tessa inquires, tilting her head questioningly.

    I grin. “There’s one more thing we have to do.”

    Tessa’s expression immediately turns sour. “Get out of here.” But there’s a playfulness in her voice.

    I respond with a firm pat of the mattress, coaxing her into the space beside me.

    Tessa sighs in resignation. “Well! I’m showering first,” she says. “I _should_ finally have hot water today.” She tosses her hair, freeing it from the ponytail she had it in all day. “Although I’m not entirely sure...” She puts a finger to her lips. “I might need someone to help inspect it for me.”

    I hop off the bed and scramble after her to the bathroom.

 

**"20"**

    The dawn is quiet and gray when I wake up. I look at my alarm clock, steadily beeping next to my ear. 5 am.

    I feel for the warmth of Tessa’s body next to me, but the bed is empty. I sit up, blearily, before hitting the alarm. I hear the shower running in the bathroom. She somehow beat me to it.

    I’d been trying to readjust my schedule for the past few weeks. The discipline I had in my twenties to get up before the sunrise everyday is decidedly gone. I rub my eyes a few times and let them adjust to the dark.

    The shower water stops and I hear the door open as Tessa comes back to the bedroom, wrapped in a towel.

    “Good morning,” she says to me with a smile. I mumble something incomprehensible back, still half-asleep, and watch as she dresses for the day in front of me. She puts on her usual skating gear—black tank top, black yoga pants, and starts packing her bag for the rink. I push back the impulse to reach out and feel her soft, warm skin. I want to pull her back into bed with me.

    I just watch her for a little bit, reveling in the silence and the mundaneness of her shoving her workout clothes and her skate guards into the same black bag she’s used for years and years and years...

    She turns to me, the same smile still on her face. “Hello,” she says, her voice soft and silky like ocean waves and wind in trees.

    I blink at her. “Hi,” I reply, my voice husky from sleep.

    “See something interesting?” she asks as she puts a spare pair of yoga pants into her bag.

    I shake my head. “Those pants look good on you,” I comment.

    “I’ve been wearing the same ones to practice for six years,” she informs me.

    I scratch my head. “I’m just noticing them now,” I confess. “Guess I’ve never really been looking.”

    She pauses in her packing. Her eyes soften. They look like two lanterns in the soft morning light. “Feeling sentimental right now, Moir?” she teases.

    I look up at her as she crosses the room and takes my hands in hers. They’re cool and soft. Her touch wakes me up a little bit more. I press my lips to her knuckles. “Last first day,” I say as I give her hands back to her.

    Tessa tries to smile, but I see a sudden flood of tears welling in her eyes. She refuses to let them spill, but the rush of emotion is undeniable. “Don’t do this to me at five in the morning,” she whispers, half-laughing, half-sniffling, and turning around before she can think about it some more.

    “Sorry kiddo,” I say, rather impulsively. I haven’t called her that in years. It seems silly to call a 28-year-old woman “kiddo”, when she can hardly be described as one anymore.

    I wonder if she ever misses it.

    “Kiddo,” Tessa repeats, biting her lip. “Still your kiddo, huh?”

    “Always,” I reply as I get up to grab my towel from the hook on the back of the door. On my way out, I stop to give Tessa a kiss on the forehead. She smells like apple shampoo.

    I finish showering as Tessa finishes making us breakfast—eggs on toast and some oatmeal with bananas is the extent of her cooking expertise. That much hasn’t change, but I munch on it gratefully before grabbing the car keys and heading out the door.

    There’s almost nobody on the road at this time—there never really is. In the car, we listen to the same Moulin Rogue CD we’ve been listening to for the past three weeks. _First, there is desire. Then, passion! Then, suspicion... Jealousy, anger, betrayal!_

    “Roxanne,” I wail, “you don’t have to put on that red light.”

    “Walk the streets for money,” Tessa wails back. “You don’t care if it is wrong or if it is right.”

    And so the first day starts as it always has, for the past twenty years. Me and Tessa in a car, listening to our program music on loop, pausing only at the Tim Horton’s drive-thru to grab a cup of coffee before splitting it to the rink.

    The day continues as it always has, with our coaches stopping us every three seconds to question whether or not we _really_ want to skate to Moulin Rogue at our last Olympics, and how there were _plenty_ of other perfectly good music choices that would be more unique, more fitting, but Tessa and I stand firm. Marie and Patch glance at each other, uncertainly, but I can see them resigning to the fact that they won’t be able to change our minds.

    “How long do you think we can pull the ‘This Is Our Last Olympics’ card?” Tessa asks me as she unlaces her skates for our lunch break.

    “Until February 25th, 2018,” I deadpan.

    I buy Tessa lunch at the nearby sandwich shop. The barista recognizes us. When she delivers our order to our table, we see five Olympic rings on our cappuccino foam. Tessa stares at her mug and tries not to cry.

    The rest of the day goes the way it’s always gone. We skate, we argue with each other over music cuts, we practice lifts and invent choreo and lean back on the boards to chat with the other Gadbois skaters. But I start to notice things. The blip in the hum of the rink, the yellow stain at the bottom of the third board from the lobby entrance, the patch of bumpy ice in the far left corner that never seems to get ironed out. The smell in the locker rooms that makes me think of old milk. How it takes exactly 13 seconds for the shower water to go from ice cold to scalding hot.

     _You sentimental idiot,_ I tell myself. _This isn’t the last time you’ll be here_. But there’s no helping it. Everything is new and old and gleeful and depressing at the same time. My gut feels like it’s been punched with a million and one different emotions, and I can barely sort them out enough to get through an entire day of practice. I want the day to end, but when I see Tessa gliding across the ice, the same perfect, angelic way she’s done since she was seven years old, I realize I also want it to last forever.

    The day ends in the same way it’s always ended. We take our showers, we change out of our sweaty workout clothes, and meet each other in the lobby. Tessa’s green eyes lock into mine as I greet her with a smile. She reaches for my hand. I give it a reassuring squeeze.

    Our last first day ends the way it began, twenty years ago. Hand in hand. _Together._


	5. epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently the Canadian press has discovered this fic, and wrote about it in one of their articles? It's been published in The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star. HAHA WHAT.

    When Tessa and I return to Montreal, the city is blanketed in a thick layer of snow.

    We’re still wearing our Canada hats and jackets and mittens when the Uber picks us up from the airport. He comments on our garishly red uniforms, and asks how the Olympics were as he puts our suitcases in the trunk. We say they were great, and then he asks what we do for a living.

    I see Tessa blink as she climbs into the car, pausing as she slams the door shut. “We’re ice dancers,” she tells the driver as the car begins to pull away from the parking structure. “Well, we used to be. We retired.” She smiles at me. I grin back at her.

    “Retired!” the driver hooted. He has the slightest hint of a French accent. “You must be, what, 20 years old?”

    “I wish,” I say sourly.

    Tessa chuckles. “We’ve been at this a while,” she says, tucking her fingers into mine in the darkness of the backseat.

    The Uber driver clicks his tongue. “Bring back any hardware?” he asks us.

    “Two golds, actually,” I tell him.

    I see his eyes peer at us in the rearview mirror. He stares at us for a second, and then they widen with realization. “You’re those two,” he says excitedly, waving his hand as he tries to find the words. “Virtue and Moir. I’ve seen you all over the news. Man! So beautiful. You two are beautiful together. Making Canada proud.”

    “Thank you,” Tessa says graciously as she gives my hand a squeeze.

    I fall asleep for a hot second, and before I know it, we arrive at Tessa's place. We take our suitcases out of the trunk of the car, and thank the driver as he pulls away. Now we’re standing in front of the entryway to Tessa’s apartment. Snowflake cling to my hair and eyelashes. I see my breath mist in the air.

    “It’s cold,” I comment. “You’d better get inside and warm up.” I rub her shoulders. “Well. Have a good day tomorrow. Get some sleep, okay?”

    She smiles tiredly at me, tucking a strand of loose hair back behind her ear. “It’s just straight to bed, sleeping in tomorrow, packing, and then straight back to the airport.”

    I pull her into a tight hug, breathing in the warm perfume on her neck. “Enjoy France,” I say. “You deserve it. Tell your mom I say hi.”

    “I will,” Tessa promises, giving my face a loving pat. She gazes up at me, her eyes soft and luminescent under the glowing streetlights. “I love you.”

    It catches me off guard. Tessa is rarely so straightforward with her affection. My heart almost bursts. “I love you too.”

    We stay there for a moment, just holding each other in the frigid cold, but I can’t feel it. I’m warm, inside and out.

    “Well,” Tessa says, breaking the silence. She loosens her grip on me and steps back. She bites her lip, hesitating. “Bye, Scott.” Her voice carries a lilt of uncertainty. “I hope I’ll see you again soon.”

    I blink at her, unable to stop myself from breaking into an astonished grin. “Hope?” I repeat. “I’ve stuck around for twenty years, you can’t get rid of me that easily.” I playfully ruffle her hair.

    Tessa sighs, but the smile on her face is adoring. “I’m sure you have a lot of plans,” is all she says.

    I scratch my head. “Not really,” I confess. “I’m just heading straight home to see the fam. And then... I don’t know what.”

    Tessa nods.

    Another silence falls over us.

    “Well,” Tessa says again. “Goodbye.” She looks like she’s about to cry.

    “Tessa,” I insist, grabbing her hands before she could take off. “ _Tessa_. Kiddo. T. Tutu. Princess. Baby.” She stares at me, eyes wide. “ _Jesus_. You’re so neurotic sometimes. You _will_ see me again. This isn’t the end.” I shake my head vigorously. “Not if you don’t want it to be.” I grip her hands so tight I swear I’m cutting off her blood circulation but I can’t force myself to let go.

    She just nods, slightly, mouth slightly agape, looking frazzled.

    I sigh, pressing her hands, Canada mittens and all, to my face. “What do you want?” I ask her, calmly, closing my eyes as I feel the shape of her soft, delicate hands between the yarn.

    She doesn’t even hesitate. “I want to see you again. A lot. Maybe everyday for the rest of my life.”

    I open my eyes to look at her. “Yeah?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Maybe?”

    “Definitely.”

    We pause.

    “Then we’ll make it happen,” I say to her.

    She smiles at me. “I’m sure we will.”

 

_the end_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


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